Great 'Work in a bank? What should we know' Hunt

Debbieness

Hi Everyone,

I currently have a loan with lloyds tsb with loan protection, If i make overpayments and then let them take the final payment by direct debit to avoid the final settlement fee, will i get a refund of some of the payment protection insurance which was added to the loan to run for the entire duration of the loan??

Debbie

DON79

Hi debbieness - you might be better to start this in a thread of it's own so that it gets seen and gets answered - sorry I can't help out.

Extant

harryhound wrote: »

I am still waiting for BarclaysManager to explain in greater detail just what he thinks is going on at Barclays. In the meantime I would suggest that he, and all Barclays employees and customers, have a read of this thread and realise that a very interesting situation is developing internationally. It makes most of the parochial concerns about Barclays on this thread almost irrelevant:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1435345

Apologies; I appear to have missed your questions and then I have been away on holiday etc. So here you go:

harryhound wrote: »

My real beef is the rate of interest Barclays is having to pay!. What is Gordon Brown charging on his preference shares? My recollection is that Barclays is paying well over 10%, something like 14% to our friends in the Gulf.?

Fourteen percent is correct, but it's tax deductible to ten percent - so actual cost is significantly lower than first glace. HMG's preference shares carry no dividend, but an interest rate of 12%. In actual cost, our capital raising through Abu Dhabi works out to be cheaper. There's also the reality that we can still issue dividends, set our own policies, do not have direct Government intervention and so forth. These things count for a lot, and should allow us to "recover" much faster.

I don't think Mr-Struggling-business-man can afford to pay an interest rate that offers Barclays a profit on the new capital? Tell me how I'm wrong; could this be the magic of fractional banking?

I am not, nor have I ever been, a business banker; so I can't really answer in terms of how expensive we are in that regard. What I can answer, however, is that our business banking does not produce a significant amount of bad debt, and retail banking as a whole remains profitable. Over a thousand new businesses join us every week.

My recollection is that the shareholders were asked for more money via a rights issue, they said no in large numbers.

Correct. Roughly twenty percent agreed, but that is no surprise given the problems with RBS at the time, and their rights issue in April.

The directors then came up with the Arab deal and the choice was "back us or sack us".

Such an ultimatum was never offered.

The "Arab deal" did not come until many months later and was not as a direct result of the rights issue.

As the latter option was really "put your bank into bankrupcy within a week" it was a bit of a "no brainer" akin to throwing the captain of the Titanic overboard?

We were never in danger of going bankrupt within a week.

I would not begin to know anything about Barclay's imminent bad debts, but please explain why you are right and the second class box tickers at the FSA are wrong.

We have always been a well capitalized bank, and have continuously met or exceeded the Tier 1 targets laid down by the FSA. However, if you raise the percentage during uncertain times with a dry credit market, you cannot expect anything but trouble. That trouble, however has been and gone for us: we currently exceed the FSA's expectations by some £17bn.

I'm a little bit amazed that after the rights issue and then the Arab deal the short sellers seem to know something, the rest of us don't.

After more than a decade of Mandelson politics, I am so cynical that I smell spin.
This is a chicken and egg argument.
Can I translate this into:
Barclays had given overdraft limits to small business during the good times and during the phoney war following the run on N.Rock, we were all crossing our fingers that the world economy would totter on while the foolish bad debts were quietly liquidated. Following the summer holidays it was obvious that things were a whole lot worse than everyone had thought as small businesses were all going overdrawn up to their limits?

Our lending to businesses is strict and based solely on the numbers of the business itself: business credit risk is very low.

If you're asking if we deliberately put numbers down only to put them up again, then no we did not - we increased loan lending, where we cannot simply "review" the situation as can be done with an overdraft.

Just at the wrong time the bank was finding itself forced to lend to these people.

We're not forced to.

You are now working long hours against this tsunami of forced borrowing, working out which of your borrowers to cull?

That's not my job, and it's nobody's job: we have commited to increasing lending by a furth £1.5bn for 2009.

If you can sort the sheep from the goats then you will deserve your bonus, if you cannot you will be joining me in the mass redundancies:hello:

Harry.

I'm sorry to hear you were made unemployed.

inmypocketnottheirs

BarclaysManager wrote: »

Apologies; I appear to have missed your questions and then I have been away on holiday etc. So here you go:



Fourteen percent is correct, but it's tax deductible to ten percent - so actual cost is significantly lower than first glace. HMG's preference shares carry no dividend, but an interest rate of 12%. In actual cost, our capital raising through Abu Dhabi works out to be cheaper. There's also the reality that we can still issue dividends, set our own policies, do not have direct Government intervention and so forth. These things count for a lot, and should allow us to "recover" much faster.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a business banker; so I can't really answer in terms of how expensive we are in that regard. What I can answer, however, is that our business banking does not produce a significant amount of bad debt, and retail banking as a whole remains profitable. Over a thousand new businesses join us every week.

Correct. Roughly twenty percent agreed, but that is no surprise given the problems with RBS at the time, and their rights issue in April.

Such an ultimatum was never offered.

The "Arab deal" did not come until many months later and was not as a direct result of the rights issue.

We were never in danger of going bankrupt within a week.

We have always been a well capitalized bank, and have continuously met or exceeded the Tier 1 targets laid down by the FSA. However, if you raise the percentage during uncertain times with a dry credit market, you cannot expect anything but trouble. That trouble, however has been and gone for us: we currently exceed the FSA's expectations by some £17bn.

I'm a little bit amazed that after the rights issue and then the Arab deal the short sellers seem to know something, the rest of us don't.

Our lending to businesses is strict and based solely on the numbers of the business itself: business credit risk is very low.

If you're asking if we deliberately put numbers down only to put them up again, then no we did not - we increased loan lending, where we cannot simply "review" the situation as can be done with an overdraft.

We're not forced to.

That's not my job, and it's nobody's job: we have commited to increasing lending by a furth £1.5bn for 2009.



I'm sorry to hear you were made unemployed.

Illuminating.

harryhound

Many thanks,

I've just inherited some Barclays shares - the certificate is not much use for making lampshades, perhaps I should lock it away in hope of a nice surprise one day.

ol1v33r

Hi just failed an overdraft application from hsbc on a graduate current account. I think that the staff member entered the information i gave incorrectly. What can be done about this? If i ask will they just redo the check with the correct info, or will they correct the mistakes? Will it be another check on my credit history? Am i better off waiting a while before re-applying and if so how long should i wait and what type or sort of account activity will give me the best chance of succeeding?

I know there are alot of questions but despite being relatively frugal with my money and having a good to excellent credit rating i still always seem to get refused from time to time more than i feel i should. But then again maybe i am just bitter because they didn't give me the money. Thanks for all the help.

A slightly dissappointed moneysaver who failed trying to beat the system.

456789

ol1v33r wrote: »

I think that the staff member entered the information i gave incorrectly.

why do you think that?

crispy_chris

Working to prevent Fraudulent losses to one of the major banks in the UK theres one point I'd like to make that you guys probably know about but shock so many customers when we point it out that I thought I ought to mention it anyway.

Cheques can return 6 months after they were issued if they are confirmed as fraudulent, and by that I mean stolen/intercepted/altered etc.

If we block your account because we deem a transaction as suspicious and request a series of ID from yourself to confirm please don't be offended. We have blocked it for a reason not just because we feel like it. If your account only has £100 in it for months and then you suddenly credit it with a £5000 cheque we may block the account. Its nothing personal, we're here to prevent loss to the bank and customer as so many times we have to tell customers that because they paid a cheque into their account and withdrew against it prior to it bouncing they are liable for all debt their account is in.
Thats the job we're paid for, personally I saved just over £250,000 in potential fraud in January alone so clearly there are a lot of dodgy people out there.

harryhound

Full marks. You have earned every penny of your bonus.

ol1v33r

Just a reminder about my post a few posts up on 03/03/09 and that i could still do with some help. Muchos Gracias

456789 I think that because of my interpretation of the situation. It was fri afternoon and very busy. The desk was in the front of the bank by the door to the entrance. People kept interuptting to ask questions and it was noisy in the branch. Also there were noticible mistakes which i had to correct from time to time ie spelling of names etc (don't pick on mine it just proves how easy it is) and i felt we weren't communicating effectively. Also i have checked my credit history recently and there should be no reason to be rejected i also used the credit rating scorer on this website and got a good/excellent score.