Swinton to close 130 branches

magpiecottage

dacouch wrote: »

It was only about 8 years ago, Swintons were offering my friend something ridiculous like £130 per motor/household customer and £30 per travel policy. To buy just his personal lines customers.

Was ever so.

I remember in the late 1980s financial institutions were paying an average of a third of a million per estate agency branch because they thought they would make a killing selling their own products.

When the endowment market fell apart they sold them back to the original owners for about £30,000 a branch.

cottager

magpiecottage wrote: »

Was ever so.

I remember in the late 1980s financial institutions were paying an average of a third of a million per estate agency branch because they thought they would make a killing selling their own products.

When the endowment market fell apart they sold them back to the original owners for about £30,000 a branch.

I worked at one such agent's at the time, when we were taken over by Nationwide B/Soc (or Nationwide Anglia B/Soc as it was then) to become Nationwide Anglia Estate Agents/NAEA - yes, I guess it would have been late 80s. This was just a small market town, but at least two other local chains of agents with offices in the town were also taken over: I think one of the others was Lloyds/Black Horse.

It was completely predictable if anyone had thought about it, but at the time in our case the "pre-marital" talk from NABS along the lines of "Oh, we'll leave you alone to get on with what you do best - you're the e/agency experts after all, blah blah" was believed.

It wasn't long, however, before the interference began -- not directly in property selling, but I mean overall scrutiny and, naturally, targets, and of course yes we had the in-house "adviser" who we'd have to refer mortgage/endowment business to. It was never the same fun going to work again. The reporting requirements (and post mortems when targets etc weren't met) took a good deal of time away from, as they had put it, "what we did best", and over a period of time as it intensified, it all became quite depressing and, contrary to what I'm sure was their perceived aim, very anti-motivational.

I can't really remember and could be wrong, but I don't they stayed in it for very long -- something like 4-5 yrs maybe? -- before selling us on to Hambro, then I'm not sure what happened after that as I left not too long afterwards. The only good thing to have come out of it many years later for me, despite their relatively short involvement, was a very modest but useful pension that I began drawing when I reached 60. I was earning relatively peanuts, even for the times back then, so only peanuts went into it for only a few years, but if they hadn't ever been involved I wouldn't have had it to supplement my state pension now. In that respect I'm grateful to them, even though it was aggro at the time!