HSBC now charging £5.50 a month for "free" Business Banking

anandp

BusinessIsBusiness wrote: »

If you cannot pay a reasonable fee for a service integral to most active businesses, then there is an issue bigger than this with the business.

This is the part I disagree with most. Why all people think it is necessary to be able to pay at any stage in business is beyond me. If you're talking about businesses that have been in place for years, fair enough, but the reality is many businesses start bootstrapped.

Also it is generally frowned upon to use a personal account for business (even if its solely used for business so tax issues can be worked out properly). With this general feel, it becomes another put-off when you're on the fence in going into business at all.

At my stage now, I'm not going to worry about £70 pa but once upon a time, I would have and when done by force, that's what I don't like. Provide incentives to go elsewhere (like the fee-paying current accounts for personal), or close to new entrants. That's the way it should be done. We're not talking about your local company here, we're talking about big banks who can do things in a better way.

pmduk

anandp wrote: »

This is the part I disagree with most. Why all people think it is necessary to be able to pay at any stage in business is beyond me. If you're talking about businesses that have been in place for years, fair enough, but the reality is many businesses start bootstrapped.

It's for the business owner to provide/acquire the venture capital. Not expect free subsidies from the bank.

BusinessIsBusiness

anandp wrote: »

This is the part I disagree with most. Why all people think it is necessary to be able to pay at any stage in business is beyond me. If you're talking about businesses that have been in place for years, fair enough, but the reality is many businesses start bootstrapped.

Also it is generally frowned upon to use a personal account for business (even if its solely used for business so tax issues can be worked out properly). With this general feel, it becomes another put-off when you're on the fence in going into business at all.

That's why free banking for the first X years negates this issue.. pretty much all banks offer this for Start-Ups.

anandp wrote: »

At my stage now, I'm not going to worry about £70 pa but once upon a time, I would have and when done by force, that's what I don't like. Provide incentives to go elsewhere (like the fee-paying current accounts for personal), or close to new entrants. That's the way it should be done. We're not talking about your local company here, we're talking about big banks who can do things in a better way.

For existing biz like yourself, I can understand the initial anger at being charged. But as I mentioned in Santander' case, there is a logical (if not controversial) reason for making such a decision. The general consensus from speaking to people (I am sure you get the gist of where I work from my previous comments on MSE), is existing business account holders expect free banking. However, the market isn't the same as it was 5-10 years ago... The culture is changing and peoples expectations need to change.

As for existing account holders- nothings free forever. You cannot expect a product to be the same ∞ and thats why T&C reflect this (Abbey being the exception thanks to erroneous marketing).

anandp

I get that it can't stay the same forever, but I do believe it was an error to do things this way rather than stop all new accounts like this first. Announce that all will be going within x period of time. Provide incentives for earlier transition.

In times when banks don't have a good rep anymore, customer service and the way things are done rather than what they're actually doing go a long way. All they really needed to do was bring in some of their subsidiary FD's customer experience specialists.

ERICS_MUM

zcacmxi wrote: »

I've 3 HSBC business accounts on the business direct tariff. The most active takes 1 payment in per month, the least 1 payment in every 3 month..

£66 per account per year.. £198 per year in total.

Seems a bit steep, they made £14Billion profit last year even without charging!

based on what capital, and giving what rate of return ? It's possible that £148 billion just isn't a good enough profit on the total worth of the business.