MSE News: An anatomy of banks: When Martin Lewis met Barclays

Wywth

matttye wrote: »

Did you read the entire article?

"It read: "Our commitment to you. At Barclays our staff receive no sales incentive or commissions. Our only focus is on providing you with great service and helping you meet your financial needs."

If their only focus is on providing a great service and helping you meet your financial needs, why wouldnt they send you off down the road if a better product suits your needs?

Clearly there's still a certain amount of BS and spin.

I'm not sure Barclays are authorised to give any investment advice are they?

According to their website, it suggests seeking the advice of an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) if you want such financial advice.

In which case they should only be acting purely on instructions received.

JuicyJesus

matttye wrote: »

If their only focus is on providing a great service and helping you meet your financial needs, why wouldnt they send you off down the road if a better product suits their needs?

Two reasons:

1) They aren't allowed to recommend or even discuss other companies' products

And

2) Basic commercial sense. If you are in Barclays, you should expect to be offered Barclays products. If you ask Barclays staff for suggestions on what to do about a debt, oddly enough Barclays will suggest Barclays products. There is nothing particularly wrong with this or scandalous about it.

jamesf75

Whilst it is true that mis-selling practices were shocking I would like to play Devils Advocate. Go into McDonalds and you'll be asked if you'd 'like to go large', buy some shoes and you'll be asked if you want polish, go to buy a sofa and be asked if you want scotch guard etc...

Think about our individual jobs, if you work in the private sector (I do) you are in BUSINESS. If no sales are made you would be out of business and out of a job. So why are only banks/building societies seen as the bad guys ??

Discuss.......

pqrdef

Having a Barclaycard already needn't be fatal. They've recently been offering a 0% 12 month SBT to existing customers, which obviously you could use to pay off interest-bearing debt on the same card. It's not the best deal on the market, but you expect to have to shop around for that.

But there are so many gotchas. For one thing, they won't just pay the SBT to the card, although they could - it has to go to your current account and back, by arbitrary diktat. So if you're already maxed out on the card, you'll have to pay off the balance before you do the SBT, which means you'll need to organise a £5K bridging loan for, oh, possibly as much as 5 minutes. Can the branch help with that? Probably not.

And the offer may not still be on, though there's no obvious reason why a customer who could have done it a couple of months ago can't do it now.

And it may have been invitation-only, and only on a selection of their bewildering array of cards, and was probably never marketed through branches anyway.

Likewise if a low-rate-for-life BT to my Nationwide card is the answer to all my problems, they won't tell me that at my Nationwide branch, because it's a phone-only offer.

There's a marketing logic behind all this. But that's the trouble, it's all driven by marketing logic, not customer needs. Nobody has looked at the business from the point of view of how to put branches in a position where they can offer their customers sound solutions from a comprehensive and competitive range of their own products.

I expect Tesco to promote their wares at me while I'm in the shop, and in other appropriate places, and I don't expect them to promote anybody else's. And I expect them to make a profit out of selling to me. But that's a by-product of providing a service that I need.

I need to get supplies in, and I'd like to do it somewhere that offers a comprehensive range, stupendous choice, maximum convenience and affordable prices. If Tesco weren't doing that for me - if they were only interested in selling me what they want to sell me, not what I want to buy - I wouldn't be there.

So if there's a price war on toilet rolls, Tesco won't be saying "we aren't stocking toilet rolls any more, no profit in it, the margins aren't worth all the shelf space, we're a business you know, we're only here to make profits, maximising shareholder value blah blah." Tesco will carry on stocking toilet rolls because their core business is meeting the customers' needs for a full weekly shopping service, and toilet rolls are a core component of that.

But the banks won't fix this at branch level. They need new management structures based on a different conception of what the business is. And no use just changing job titles or playing musical chairs - the wrong people have prospered under the old system, so there'll need to be a purge, with the wrong people replaced by people with different backgrounds and attitudes.

What we really learn from this is that key managers at Barclays didn't even know why it was a bad idea to invite Martin Lewis for a PR offensive.

matttye

JuicyJesus wrote: »

Two reasons:

1) They aren't allowed to recommend or even discuss other companies' products

And

2) Basic commercial sense. If you are in Barclays, you should expect to be offered Barclays products. If you ask Barclays staff for suggestions on what to do about a debt, oddly enough Barclays will suggest Barclays products. There is nothing particularly wrong with this or scandalous about it.

I agree there's nothing scandalous about it. Just wondering why Barclays are trying too hard to convince people they're not cross-selling and only have the customer in mind.

They're treating it like it is something scandalous, when it isn't, rather than just being transparent.

kempsey

Facts!!!!

• It is true that Barclays has stopped incentivising it's staff for product sales and now rewards staff for high service scores which is measured on counter service rather than Personal Banking
• Barclays believes that offering the best service is a result of selling it's own products!!! (Cheeky but true)
• Martin's article quotes that they have removed the 'Targets & Sales' but this is NOT true! Back of house is full of white boards that monitor sales progress for all 'Sellers' (A term which we are defined by management) the culture has changed whereas they believe that great service is a result of selling products!!!
• Sellers (AKA Personal Bankers) must maintained a reputable Sales performance which is what they are graded by annually. Cancellations of products has a detrimental impact to their overall performance. Therefore, to counteract this, they must continue to excel in their product lines to maintain excellence! Something that drives most of the staff
• They do believe that mortgage borrowing IS the best way to reduce outgoings by consolidating unsecured debt to now what becomes SECURED to their property.
• They continue to perform outbound telephony to 'Cold Call' customers....You may think this is a genuine 'Service call' but if you are not booked into the diary system to be a potential customer, then that is a bad reflection on their efforts to meet their sales goals!

SO.....HAVE THEY CHANGED AT ALL? Or maybe they are trying a different tactic that they think will fool the customer???

gwapenut

Sorry Martin, but I'm not sure I agree that pointing people towards 0% interest balance transfer cards is the right advice.

People who are "savvy" enough to safely manage balance transfers are likely to work that out as a solution without Barclays' help.

But can you imagine the possible mis-selling scandal if those who need firmer advice did transfer to 0% deals for 24 months, only to then find they're unable to shift again (or forget to shift) and resigned themselves to paying 18% APR later.

At least the Barclays advice offered a safe middle ground, which may not be the cheapest but certainly would have no chance of ending up being the most expensive.

Digging out the cheapest deals is all well and good ... but never underestimate the amount of spoon feeding expected in today's society.

Bloomberg

rugmaker wrote: »

Every time I go into Barclays they insist on telling me how much I could borrow if I want a loan and checking where my mortgage is. I also notice that just in the last week the list of accounts on the Barclays app on my phone now has a line in the middle telling me how much I have been cleared to borrow as a loan or overdraft.

I have had and almost cleared a mountain of debt, and part of the problem (without in any way excusing my personal responsibility, which was the bottom line) was that it was just so easy to get. Offering people money on a plate like this without having any idea of their circumstances is just not helpful. I am more than capable of asking for a loan if I want one, and have done.

If this is not cross-selling, I dread the day when they launch a big sales push.

I am dead against mis selling, however there is nothing wrong with suggestive selling. Customers can say no, banks make their money selling credit, butchers make theirs selling meat. Whichever commodity you are selling you want to sell as much of it as possible.


Each and everyone of us know what we can and cannot afford, reckless lending goes hand in hand with reckless borrowing. The fact that the bank offer you money doesn't mean that you have to take it. I was in Hilton in Paddington recently and I ordered a whiskey, the bar tender asked if I would like a double, I said no thank you. Just because something is there does not mean that you have to take it.



Blaming the banks is a cop out, I had a loan and overdraft offer on my Barclays app and I deleted both. People need to wake up and take responsibility for their actions and stop blaming banks. On the rare occasion I go into a bank and they approach me to sell a product I just say no thanks.



Years ago when I was with the Nationwide I paid in a large cheque and the cashier loudly asked if I had any plans for that money. I looked sternly at him and said "please pay that into my account". All financial institutions are at it.

Wywth

kempsey wrote: »

...

• They continue to perform outbound telephony to 'Cold Call' customers....You may think this is a genuine 'Service call' but if you are not booked into the diary system to be a potential customer, then that is a bad reflection on their efforts to meet their sales goals!

I must admit, when we started a new limited company recently, Barclays were the one bank that made an unsolcited call to us within a couple of hours of being formed, asking if they could provide us with business banking services. When I explained it was a dormant company registered only to protect the name and that we had no need to banking services for that limited company, they made a swift exit (after cheekily enquiring if we were interested in moving our business banking for our current, active company to them)

Hope2008

I was on the phone to Barclays last Saturday trying to resolve an issue about charges that shouldn't have been on my account. I was on the phone for 45mins, going round and round in circles while the advisor had to go and speak to his supervisor numerous times. In the end I just wanted to get off the phone but oh no the telephone advisor decided it would be a good idea to try and sell me a mortgage. I told him I wasn't interested so he then started telling me (in great detail) about a Barclays app I could download to my phone!!!!!

It was like the never ending phone call.