LOUGHBOROUGH Building Society

Growingold

I applied early last week by post for their 5 year Retirement Saver enclosing a cheque which has still not been cashed.  I have heard nothing back from them.

Has anyone had any experience of opening an account with the Loughborough?  How long does it take?

Thanks

RosieRooBear

Growingold said:

I applied early last week by post for their 5 year Retirement Saver enclosing a cheque which has still not been cashed.  I have heard nothing back from them.

Has anyone had any experience of opening an account with the Loughborough?  How long does it take?

Thanks

@Growingold, sent my application by post last Tuesday afternoon (10/9) and my account was opened yesterday with the cheque being cleared today. I did phone them on Monday to enquire and was told that they were very busy with applications for this account and were working their way through them. The man I spoke to was very nice and checked that my application had arrived. Hope this helps.

TheWoodler

I phoned them up last week to ask about how I could email them securely. They said they’d immediately send me a secure email link where I could upload my application and necessary ID and took my email address.

It never arrived so I emailed them and repeated the request. Still no reply to date.

I get that smaller BS struggle with the workload from popular products, but when they take my email address and tell me they’ll send me a secure link straight away, I do expect that to be honoured. Don’t tell the customer something you can’t do. 

Wheres_My_Cashback

From speaking with them it's taking 7-10 days to get accounts open. Once open they e-mail the account details to you so it can be funded electronically if a cheque has not been sent.

la531983

Baffling that companies in this day and age still operate in this way with post and cheques. 

allegro120

I've opened this account in a small branch on Tuesday, the cheque was cashed on Wendsday and I received my passbook today (Thursday).

friolento

la531983 said:

Baffling that companies in this day and age still operate in this way with post and cheques. 

Apparently it preserves jobs. Or so I’m told.

WillPS

I think people tend to underestimate the cost involved in getting a basic, functional, secure online banking system going. Even using off-the-shelf packages there is no turnkey solution - particularly if they need to marry up an existing legacy systems with it.

These are costs which it has been very hard for some of the traditional building societies to stomach - even when you consider the operational savings this would bring about and the amount of new custom it would attact.

It probably doesn't help that the people who'd need to make these decisions will often lean toward protectionism, but that's not the only reason these things don't happen.

allegro120

WillPS said:

I think people tend to underestimate the cost involved in getting a basic, functional, secure online banking system going. Even using off-the-shelf packages there is no turnkey solution - particularly if they need to marry up an existing legacy systems with it.

These are costs which it has been very hard for some of the traditional building societies to stomach - even when you consider the operational savings this would bring about and the amount of new custom it would attact.

It probably doesn't help that the people who'd need to make these decisions will often lean toward protectionism, but that's not the only reason these things don't happen.

However, Notts BS has met these costs in the face of Beehive. Yet Notts accounts are still operating in old ways.

WillPS

allegro120 said:

WillPS said:

I think people tend to underestimate the cost involved in getting a basic, functional, secure online banking system going. Even using off-the-shelf packages there is no turnkey solution - particularly if they need to marry up an existing legacy systems with it.

These are costs which it has been very hard for some of the traditional building societies to stomach - even when you consider the operational savings this would bring about and the amount of new custom it would attact.

It probably doesn't help that the people who'd need to make these decisions will often lean toward protectionism, but that's not the only reason these things don't happen.

However, Notts BS has met these costs in the face of Beehive. Yet Notts accounts are still operating in old ways.

The Nottingham (note - not Notts, which means Nottinghamshire, the correct abbreviation is Nottm) have done something a little different - and setup an entirely new system (based on Salesforce, it seems) for their online-only accounts - presently branded Beehive. The branches all still run their legacy system, and can only provide limited support for online/Beehive accounts.

How long this duality of systems is planned or will go on for is anyone's guess, but supposedly the Beehive brand is going.