Bank of Cyprus UK sold-off and rebranding

KingL

I had a letter in the post saying that the sale of Bank of Cyprus UK to Cynergy Capital Limited has completed and that the bank is being rebranded 'Cynergy Bank'

As-per some earlier press releases
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bank-of-cyprus-selling-uk-arm-to-alliance-of-entrepreneurs-n88d35wm7

There is a faq, which is mostly reproduced here

This is mostly just for info, but also wondering if anyone has knowledge/views about Cynergy Capital Ltd. They have near-zero presence on the www and, according to Companies House were only incorporated in May 2018.

Here's some blurb from asiantrader.com about one of the Directors, a retail 'magnate', it seems....

Biggus_Dickus

The name change to Cynergy Bank will take place on Monday. Apart from paying £103M I don’t know anything about Cynergy, ...but I’m hoping they’ll push the boat out and up their easy access interest rate to 5%;...for existing customers only of course. :beer:

I’ve almost emptied my BoC account,...but I intend to put most of it back when the Cynergy Bank website is fully functional after this weekend’s seamless :eek: I.T. system ‘maintenance’.

Biggus_Dickus

Info for anyone remotely interested:

Cynergy Bank appears to operating fine; I’ve made test payments this morning (both in and out) and they appeared within minutes.

Had to delete Bank of Cyprus and create a new Cynergy Bank ‘payee’ in my Bank account, obviously, but apart from that everything else is unchanged. The website functionality/appearance is exactly the same bar the name change.

janesmith

God-awful bank.

They have predominantly (52%) one star reviews on Trustpilot and according to Fairer Finance they are ranked 27th out 30 banks.

As with other people complaining online, my experiences with them have been horrendous. Customer service is horrendous and account opening takes weeks and weeks of chasing them up. I wish I'd never gone anywhere near such a third rate entity. I'm withdrawing my money from them and saving it somewhere safer and superior.

Shedman

janesmith wrote: »

God-awful bank.

They have predominantly (52%) one star reviews on Trustpilot and according to Fairer Finance they are ranked 27th out 30 banks.

As with other people complaining online, my experiences with them have been horrendous. Customer service is horrendous and account opening takes weeks and weeks of chasing them up. I wish I'd never gone anywhere near such a third rate entity. I'm withdrawing my money from them and saving it somewhere safer and superior.

Your experience surprises me as I've had no issues with them having opened both an easy access account for myself and another for MIL using Power of Attorney. Given how tricky it usually is to open accounts using POA this was straightforward. Mind you this was last year whilst they were still Cyprus Bank so perhaps things have deteriorated recently. If so that's a shame.

We're coming to end of the bonus rate on these accounts so I will be moving away (unless they offer a new bonus rate)..hopefully I don't experience the poor CS that you've encountered.

janesmith

Interesting to hear about your experiences. I'm pleased to hear your experiences have been OK.

I don't make decisions based on individual anecdote and Cynergy Bank has a very high ratio of disgruntled customers. For instance, they have an extremely high ratio of one star ratings on Trustpilot, with lots of customers writing about endless issues.

By consensus, this mediocre bank is about ten years behind the times with their antiquated ways of working to top their oft-appalling customer service.

realaledrinker

Faultless new ISA account opening online, account numbers issued by e-mail within a couple of minutes. Deposited money next day and it was received and account visible on line within 24 hours.

I haven't rated them on Trustpilot. Perhaps I should.

bowlhead99

janesmith wrote: »

I don't make decisions based on individual anecdote and Cynergy Bank has a very high ratio of disgruntled customers. For instance, they have an extremely high ratio of one star ratings on Trustpilot, with lots of customers writing about endless issues.

By consensus, this mediocre bank is about ten years behind the times with their antiquated ways of working to top their oft-appalling customer service.

By contrast, I don't make decisions based on trustpilot.

Here's an example. I've banked with Lloyds for 25+ years (among other banks, but my main account is with them). By and large they have been fine for my needs.

The group (which also includes Halifax and Bank of Scotland and Scottish Widows) has 30 million customer relationships. If you go to trustpilot, Lloyds Bank has under 500 reviews, Halifax under 1000, BoS under 300, Scottish Widows under 100. The reviews are unfavorable, with all getting one star out of five (scoring between 1-2 out of ten).

The problem with deciding you will make your decisions by trustpilot consensus rather than by 'individual anecdotes' is that the trustpilot reviews are all 'individual anecdotes', typically posted by people who have had something go wrong so badly that they bothered to sign up to a review site to voice their displeasure.

A little under 2000 - largely negative - reviews, out of 30 million customer relationships, means that less 0.00067% encountered service so good or bad that they could be bothered to spend their time leaving a review on Trustpilot. The banking group also had 99.999x% of customers who didn't feel they needed to go to trustpilot and vent.

I am not suggesting that Lloyds and Halifax provide perfect service to 99.999x out of every 100 customers, but the fact that most people who expressed an opinion on Trustpilot were dissatisfied doesn't mean I should expect everything to go wrong. It has been broadly fine for me. You can't extrapolate meaningful statistics from a statistically insignificant group of people, who are vocal about their displeasure, and infer that the service is terrible compared to other options.

If I look at Bank Of Cyprus, you are right that 52% of people rating it at Trustpilot gave it 1-star. That's 13 people who didn't like the service. On this thread, we have several people saying it's fine (BD, Sherman and realaledrinker) and one (janesmith) saying it is 'horrendous' and 'so godawful' that they are moving. We shouldn't make decisions based on an 'individual anecdote' right? So maybe I should one l ignore the feedback from Janesmith and go with the consensus on the thread, which is that it's OK

Janesmith says the customers on trustpilot are writing about 'endless issues'. But you can scroll and find the end quite easily. There are only 13 of them giving one star, the other half who reviewed gave it more than one star, and 99%+ did not think it was worth expressing a preference through a written review.

Also, it goes without saying that the experiences are unverified. I expect janesmith who thinks trustpilot reviews are useful, is one of the 13 to have left the one star negative feedback. For all she knows, the other 12 could be me, leaving a malicious review to push people towards Lloyds, because I hold Lloyds shares in my pension.

Neil_Jones

To be honest if we all banked based on what Trustpilot says we'd all be sleeping on mattresses stuffed with notes that get fuller every day.

If we managed every aspect of our lives based on the company reviews on Trustpilot I rather suspect we'd still be living in caves.

EthicsGradient

I opened an account with them, as Cynergy, in March, and it was smooth and quick. Got emails with most account details on the Monday of applying, the rest in the post on the Wednesday, and by the Thursday my first deposit was in the account and confirmed by email. I've had no problems depositing or withdrawing since.

londoninvestor

Neil_Jones wrote: »

To be honest if we all banked based on what Trustpilot says we'd all be sleeping on mattresses stuffed with notes that get fuller every day..

I suspect it's worse and we'd all have invested in London Capital & Finance...

(Not surprisingly the reviews are negative now - but there were plenty of good ones there before it all went wrong.)