Teens bank accounts now harder to get

mally7uk

Wanted to open a bank account for my 15 year old. Thought this should be simple enough. Surely the banks should be crying out for customers considering the mess they have got us into...
Went to Lloyds as it is on local high street and easy to pop into.
Had to wait for an appointment but luckily they had someone available within 10 minutes.
The guy then asked about ID and, as I had checked out what was required on their website beforehand, I had all the right stuff with me. This included passports, birth certificates, bills with address on etc. The guy took all our documentation and said he was just checking with 'a manager'.
This apparently took 15 minutes because we were waiting for ages.
Was then told that we could not open a bank account for teenager because I did not bank with them.I was absolutely furious. :mad: This was NOT stated on their website, and apart from that, my banking with them should not be an issue. My child should be able to have an account wherever she likes. It was suggested that I could 'open a dormant account' in order to meet their criteria (which had apparently come into force within the last month - how convenient). I left feeling very angry. I went to their website and double checked everywhere but still no mention of this issue: parent must bank with them to get a teen (or child account). So I filled in their complaint procedure online.
Within a couple of days a 'nice' woman called me. She informed me that this was their new policy and only children who's parents banked with them could open accounts. I had never heard any such rubbish in my life. She got a real ear bashing from me I can tell you. :mad:
Since then, I have managed to get my teen an account with Santander - even they also have the same rule about banking parents (which I did not know about until I got there because this was not mentioned on their site either) BUT I luckily had an old savings account with them that they were able to track, plus their bank people were more flexible in their approach - Lloyds insisited I had a current account, Santander accepted a savings account.
Has anyone else come across this issue? Surely banks should be crying out for customers and be prepared to accept new customers regardless of who their parents bank with. It seems that children/teens are effectively getting NO market choice. This cannot be right. What is going on??:shocked:

innovate

Banks are commercial organisations and can define their business practices as they like, within the boundaries of the law and their licences, of course.

I can't see what the issue is with a parent having to have an account if their children want accounts. Just open one - you could even benefit from it. Lloyds have a fantastic account with the Club Lloyds, and the Santander 123 isn't bad either. You don't have to give up your existing banking arrangements, either.

They should, of course, mention all their pre-requisites on their websites.

Hominu

Yes, banks are crying out for customers, but they want customers who have regular income, apply for credit cards, loans, etc. They don't really want accounts with just a few tens of pounds. Now if the parents also banked there then there's a chance of more business (Have you thought about our childs savings account, for example)

Making it a requirement, I don't know, seems a bit odd, but they are within their rights to refuse to open accounts for anyone.

CC-Warrior

Everyone has to start somewhere with their income/savings and most teenagers/children aren't going to have bags of cash to begin with. I would have thought it would only be required if the parent is required as some kind of guarantor, and needed to bank at the same place. I would have been annoyed too. I would have opened an account and just not used it (or closed it soon after)

~Beanie~

mally7uk wrote: »

Within a couple of days a 'nice' woman called me. She informed me that this was their new policy and only children who's parents banked with them could open accounts. I had never heard any such rubbish in my life. She got a real ear bashing from me I can tell you. :mad:

A bit harsh really, it wasn't the poor woman's fault was it, she didn't make the rules.

anoncol

Reasonable from the banks. Considering a 15 year old signature means nothing.

im-lost

anoncol wrote: »

Reasonable from the banks. Considering a 15 year old signature means nothing.

Are you suggesting a bank would give a 15 year old a cheque book and guarantee card, a loan, an overdraft, a credit card etc etc

mikey_l

Was there any particular reason you didn't want your child to bank at the same place as you? I would have presumed it would have been your first port of call.

reclusive46

im-lost wrote: »

Are you suggesting a bank would give a 15 year old a cheque book and guarantee card, a loan, an overdraft, a credit card etc etc

Actually banks are more than happy to give 15 or 16 year olds cheque books as there is no credit risk with them these days anyway.

RedDwarf82

Starting from the two hypotheses:
1) The cost for the bank of maintaining a bank account for a child is ~0.
2) Given two banks, X and Y. Being A the probability of the teenager having an account with X when he is 30. Being B the probability of the teenager having an account with Y when he is 30. If the teenager today opens an account with bank X then A > B.

We reach the conclusion that the bank IS interested in opening a bank account for the teenager. Not because the £10 he will have in his account today, but because of the mortgage he will get from the same bank 10 years later.


So now I am going to argue that not including that information in the website is not incompetence (God knows I know Lloyds can be incompetent) but malice.
No matter how good the Club account is. The fact is that if mally7uk had know of that requirement he may have decided to go to a different bank. I am going to argue they avoided including the information in the website on purpose with the hope than once there, mally7uk would decide to open the account.

I will also argue that time has value. And mally7uk lost 25 minutes, plus the time (and bus tickets?) required to go there and back, because of Lloyds incompetence (malice). mally7uk should be compensated.

And finally, I don't know if such a law exists, but IMHO banks should be legally obligated to show any condition they use to refuse opening an account in writing. The condition should be, by law, in both the website and some booklet available in the branch.
Because, how is mally7uk supposed to know such a requirement really exists? As far as we know she may have been refused because of the colour of his skin, and the parent account requirement was just something a racist Lloyd employer made up. Seriously, how do we KNOW that's not true? In such a scenario the nice woman would have just continued with the lie to avoid getting Lloyds into bigger problems.

I mean, AT THE VERY LEAST, the nice woman should have said "we are sorry about our mistake, we are going to fix the information in the website". As far as we know Lloyds was informed of a problem in its website that *will* cause problems to more people in the future... and they are not going to do anything to fix it.

So yes, I can see the issue here. And I don't think mally7uk was more harsh than needed.