Behaviour of MBNA

Gloria17

Two weeks ago I applied to MBNA, through the MoneySupermarket website, for a personal loan of £7,000 towards buying a car. I got approval quickly and on Monday 7th November received a loan agreement by email. The covering email told me I should receive the loan within 3-5 working days. A week later, with no communication or money from them, I called them.  The helpful chap I spoke to said he would pass my query onto his 'Operational Team'.  On Wednesday 16th November, I got a call from MBNA. She told me that my loan had not been paid as I had asked for it to be paid into a business bank account and, as this was a personal loan, so it needed to be a personal account. I felt a bit daft, as that was obvious but the guidance on filling in the application did not state this.  She told me I had a to apply again from scratch.  I asked why the application wasn't rejected immediately and couldn't I go back into the application and change the bank account but she said that was not possible. I asked why it had taken 10 days to tell me this when over a week ago they had sent me a loan agreement.  Why wait until I contacted them? Why send a loan agreement out when they weren't going to give me the loan?  She apologised. I then asked what happened to my application as it's full of very valuable personal information.  She replied, rather vaguely, 'oh it just drops off the system'.  And I asked 'where does it drop to?  Is it hanging around the ether for criminals to pick up?' She didn't know but assured me that it was secure, but she clearly didn't know!

This worries me on two counts: firstly they have behaved badly and have strung me along for 10 days without telling me I wasn't getting the loan they had apparently approved. Should I complain formally or report them to the Banking Ombudsman? Secondly, how can I be assured that my confidential information has been destroyed? Should I report them to the Information Commissioner?

Wanted to warn you about this in case you also apply to MBNA in addition to asking what the best course of action is please. 

Ebe_Scrooge

Did you specify the account where you wanted the loan to be paid into at the time of making the application, or only once the loan had been approved?

Gloria17 said: couldn't I go back into the application and change the bank account but she said that was not possible.

This is correct - you can't change the application details post-approval, this would be tantamount to fraud.

Gloria17 said:

Secondly, how can I be assured that my confidential information has been destroyed? Should I report them to the Information Commissioner?

No, there's nothing to report.  Any financial institutions will have very strict data retention/destruction policies, mandated in part the ICO.  If they fail to meet those obligations they face the possibility of enormous fines.  Your data is safe - well, as safe as it reasonably can be.  Yes, I know, you hear news of companies being hacked every so often - but they will be doing everything within their power to maintain the safety of your data, it's in their own interests to do so.

As to why you weren't informed of the problem earlier, I'm not sure.  Human error, IT glitch?  Would the recent postal strikes have any bearing?  Have you checked to see you haven't missed an email if communication was via email?  I suspect it is an unfortunate error somewhere along the line, rather than any deliberate attempt to mislead you.

Ultimately, it should be fairly obvious that you're not allowed to use a personal loan for business purposes, that's what business loans are for.

Gloria17

Yes I did specify the account at the time of application so it should have been turned down at that point. I don't think that 'human error' is a good excuse for any financial company who should have systems to ensure this doesn't happen.  It sounds like you have personal knowledge of what happens to data in such a circumstance.  Do you? If so I shall take comfort from your reassurance.

cymruchris

Gloria17 said:

Yes I did specify the account at the time of application so it should have been turned down at that point. I don't think that 'human error' is a good excuse for any financial company who should have systems to ensure this doesn't happen.  It sounds like you have personal knowledge of what happens to data in such a circumstance.  Do you? If so I shall take comfort from your reassurance.

I imagine they didn't know it was a business account until they came to process the loan itself. So even though it was on the application form, until it was processed further it probably won't have been picked up. They could have been  better at communicating, but they're right that you'll have to start afresh. Usually from my knowledge, personal loans go to personal accounts, and business loans go to business accounts, was there a reason why you wanted the personal loan to go to the business account?

Ebe_Scrooge

Gloria17 said:

It sounds like you have personal knowledge of what happens to data in such a circumstance.  Do you? If so I shall take comfort from your reassurance.

I do work for a bank in their IT department (have done for longer than I care to remember in various different banks).  I won't claim to be an expert in every single area of every business model, but I do know about Data Protection laws and information retention policies