Have some banks lost the ability to let us manage our money?

Nebulous2

RG2015 said:

Nebulous2 said:

It seems to be very difficult to move on from and amalgamate legacy systems. Then again you could start from scratch, a la TSB, but that doesn’t appear to work any better. 

Just to correct your above information though, it was Clydesdale that took over Virgin, not the other way round. 

The legacy system problem does explain why VM banking, savings and credit card have three different platforms. It is doubly confusing that some VM savings accounts are on the current account banking platform.

 If I understand correctly, Clydesdale Bank plc did indeed take over Virgin Money.

However, its holding company CYBG plc (Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banking Group) was renamed as Virgin Money plc.

Hence it is understandable to think that Virgin took over Clydesdale.

It’s hard to describe just how messy Clydesdale Bank’s IT systems are. I have a personal beef with them, and probably shouldn’t let my prejudices rule my thinking.

However to give you a flavour, they turned me down for a Virgin account with the wine offer, and the rep on the phone referred to a loan I previously had with Clydesdale. I had complained about the difficulty I had in getting them to accept my money to pay it off, took it to the ombudsman and received compensation. I was convinced they had turned me down because of my previous complaint, submitted a DSAR and received over 300 pages of information dating back to 1988. I was astonished that they were still holding all that information on an ex-customer who had left over 4 years previously. I was also surprised that a front line customer services person had access to it when I tried to open a new account. 

masonic

colsten said:

masonic said:

kaMelo said:

masonic said:

I do wish current account best buy tables rated banks on things like different channels of communication phone/secure messaging/live chat, features like in-app cheque deposits, card freezes and other modern advances so that people can weigh these up in advance. At the moment, all you can do is experience a range of different current accounts, all of which have strengths and weaknesses, and use them accordingly.

The best you could do is to compare whether banks have or have not got a feature, even then it's impossible to allocate a weighting to determine a "best buy" as everyone has different wants or needs and will give a particular feature more or less weighting depending upon their wants or needs.

Even then it's not that straightforward. Take cheque deposits, many have the feature but the specifics are vastly different, per cheque limit, daily limit, number of cheques per day, etc.

I get your point but don't think it could ever be a simple as rating banks in a "Best Buy" table.  

Perhaps I have confused people by mentioning best buy tables. What I meant was a feature comparison table without any weightings, just facts. So have the accounts being compared in columns (Account 1, Account 2, Account 3 etc) and then each row would have a specific feature. For example:

"Mobile cheque deposit"... Account 1: "No"; Account 2: "Up to £100/day"; Account 3: "Up to 3 totalling £200/day"

"Live chat"... Account 1: Mon-Fri 9-5; Account 2: No; Account 3: Yes, Unspecified availability

"Faster Payments"... Account 1: Branch, Phone, Online £10,000; Account 2: Phone, Online £50,000; Account 3: Online £10,000, Phone £100,000

Hopefully that paints a picture.

moneyfacts.co.uk provides pretty comprehensive "at a glance" info for all current accounts. Albeit not in table form like you described. I suppose there is a limit to which comparators can be shown on a single page / view before the whole thing becomes unwieldy.

Thanks, that is a good effort, which I've not come across before.

If you have the data, a comparison table could be generated on the fly using a smaller set of comparators picked from a list. One can dream, I suppose.

Pmatt

masonic said:

I do wish current account best buy tables rated banks on things like different channels of communication phone/secure messaging/live chat, features like in-app cheque deposits, card freezes and other modern advances so that people can weigh these up in advance. At the moment, all you can do is experience a range of different current accounts, all of which have strengths and weaknesses, and use them accordingly.

I agree that would be nice, but my main beef with HSBC is that they will keep changing how they operate, introducing changes that simply do not work, not because we are feeble and can not understand, but because the basic operational aspect of account management is not checked out adequately before they chose to release it.
My issue with Virgin is simply inconsistency, lack of integration and unwillingness to make it work properly.

[Deleted User]

Pmatt said:

masonic said:

I do wish current account best buy tables rated banks on things like different channels of communication phone/secure messaging/live chat, features like in-app cheque deposits, card freezes and other modern advances so that people can weigh these up in advance. At the moment, all you can do is experience a range of different current accounts, all of which have strengths and weaknesses, and use them accordingly.

I agree that would be nice, but my main beef with HSBC is that they will keep changing how they operate, introducing changes that simply do not work, not because we are feeble and can not understand, but because the basic operational aspect of account management is not checked out adequately before they chose to release it.
My issue with Virgin is simply inconsistency, lack of integration and unwillingness to make it work properly.

Virgin Money will integrate - they are using Clydesdale's B platform for banking/savings and Virgin's credit card platform and switching off the rest.

Thrugelmir

Nebulous2 said:

RG2015 said:

Nebulous2 said:

It seems to be very difficult to move on from and amalgamate legacy systems. Then again you could start from scratch, a la TSB, but that doesn’t appear to work any better. 

Just to correct your above information though, it was Clydesdale that took over Virgin, not the other way round. 

The legacy system problem does explain why VM banking, savings and credit card have three different platforms. It is doubly confusing that some VM savings accounts are on the current account banking platform.

 If I understand correctly, Clydesdale Bank plc did indeed take over Virgin Money.

However, its holding company CYBG plc (Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banking Group) was renamed as Virgin Money plc.

Hence it is understandable to think that Virgin took over Clydesdale.

It’s hard to describe just how messy Clydesdale Bank’s IT systems are. I have a personal beef with them, and probably shouldn’t let my prejudices rule my thinking.

However to give you a flavour, they turned me down for a Virgin account with the wine offer, and the rep on the phone referred to a loan I previously had with Clydesdale. I had complained about the difficulty I had in getting them to accept my money to pay it off, took it to the ombudsman and received compensation. I was convinced they had turned me down because of my previous complaint, submitted a DSAR and received over 300 pages of information dating back to 1988. I was astonished that they were still holding all that information on an ex-customer who had left over 4 years previously. I was also surprised that a front line customer services person had access to it when I tried to open a new account. 

That's the nature of any business. Some customers are regarded as to much trouble to deal with. Relationships are ultimately two way. 

Pmatt

Deleted User said:

...

Virgin Money will integrate - they are using Clydesdale's B platform for banking/savings and Virgin's credit card platform and switching off the rest.

Umm, is that really a full solution? Are they closing the Northern Rock savings accounts and perhaps transferring them to Clydesdale , if so when will the tell their customers? And the Virgin credit card 'platform' is a pretty simple app that has no web access. Are Virgin simply bored with playing at being a bank and would prefer to do something more exciting? I am quite surprised that two real banks, Clydesdale and Yorkshire chose to go with this rather skimpy repaint, make over with Virgin who has no proven interest in banking then to take on the defunct Northern Rock asset holding function on behalf of the treasury. It does seem to be a strange business model.

Eco_Miser

RG2015 said:

Nebulous2 said:

It seems to be very difficult to move on from and amalgamate legacy systems. Then again you could start from scratch, a la TSB, but that doesn’t appear to work any better. 

Just to correct your above information though, it was Clydesdale that took over Virgin, not the other way round. 

The legacy system problem does explain why VM banking, savings and credit card have three different platforms. It is doubly confusing that some VM savings accounts are on the current account banking platform.

 If I understand correctly, Clydesdale Bank plc did indeed take over Virgin Money.

However, its holding company CYBG plc (Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banking Group) was renamed as Virgin Money plc.

Hence it is understandable to think that Virgin took over Clydesdale.

Virgin did take over Clydesdale, as is obvious from current branding.

Legally, CYBG plc bought  Virgin Money from its shareholders by issuing them with CYBG shares, meaning that the VM owners became CYBG owners, along with the exisiting CYBG owners. Years later Virgin Money was merged with Clydesdale,  then CYBG plc changed its name to Virgin Money plc.

RG2015

Eco_Miser said:

RG2015 said:

Nebulous2 said:

It seems to be very difficult to move on from and amalgamate legacy systems. Then again you could start from scratch, a la TSB, but that doesn’t appear to work any better. 

Just to correct your above information though, it was Clydesdale that took over Virgin, not the other way round. 

The legacy system problem does explain why VM banking, savings and credit card have three different platforms. It is doubly confusing that some VM savings accounts are on the current account banking platform.

 If I understand correctly, Clydesdale Bank plc did indeed take over Virgin Money.

However, its holding company CYBG plc (Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banking Group) was renamed as Virgin Money plc.

Hence it is understandable to think that Virgin took over Clydesdale.

Virgin did take over Clydesdale, as is obvious from current branding.

Legally, CYBG plc bought  Virgin Money from its shareholders by issuing them with CYBG shares, meaning that the VM owners became CYBG owners, along with the exisiting CYBG owners. Years later Virgin Money was merged with Clydesdale,  then CYBG plc changed its name to Virgin Money plc.

Thank you for your update, although I cannot agree that it is obvious from current branding, as branding in itself does does confer any legal status.

However, I guess that if the VM owners' share exceeded the existing CYBG owners' share then VM must have taken over CYBG.

Nebulous2

Clydesdale took over Virgin and rebranded their accounts with the Virgin name. 

Virgin Money bought by CYBG for £1.7bn - BBC News

RG2015

Seems to be a difference of opinion here between Eco_Miser and Nebulous2.

Edit. As per the Nebulous2 BBC link.

"Under the terms of the deal, Virgin Money shareholders will get 1.2125 new CYBG shares for every Virgin Money share they hold, and will end up owning about 38% of the combined business."