Great 'Work in a bank? What should we know' Hunt

A question about : Great 'Work in a bank? What should we know' Hunt

Following the success of the 'supermarket staff, tell us your reduction policy' and 'disguised own brand' hunts, I want to ask bank staff for your top tips.

Are there rules about better products, what leeway do you have, what should people be asking for, can you tell us bank charges pay-out policies?

Please let us know (and feel free to be anonymous though be careful not to break any bank rules telling us). To share you info press reply and post below.

Best answers:

• I work for a well-known credit card and store card provider. As I work in the collections dept, I deal with fees and charges on a daily basis. The policy with refunding the late payment charges is simple: if the customer hasn't missed a payment in the past 12 months, the charge can be refunded. Otherwise, it shouldn't.
  Refunds are, however, at my discretion. Therefore, if you are very rude, shout down the phone or try to insult me or the company, I tend to refuse to give a refund.
• Several years ago I was unfortunate enough to work for RBS. As 'Underground' posted, bank credit databases are common practice. In RBS's Back Office system, which ALL staff have access to, it is option 99, 6 on the menu. This tells employees what, based on past account behaviour, the customer is likely to be instantly approved for. As I recall, this gives a loan figure, an overdraft figure, the type of card available (eg a gold £250 cheque gaurantee card as opposed tothe normal silver £100 one), and also the bank's risk grading of the customer. Under the Data Protection Act you can request to see this information. After all, it is better to be aware that you can have a £10,000 overdraft for 6 months than a £10,000 loan over several years with all the associated fees.
• i work in one of the major high street banks. what exactly do u guys want to know?
  claire
• Just read the posts above and you'll get a good idea of the sort of thing that interests us!
• Hi,
  Im a corporate relationship manager for Bank of Scotland so I deal mainly with high end business customers now. However I was a retail branch manager a few years ago so im well placed for a few questions on HBOS/Halifax also.
  Couple of notes I can think of straight away:
• HBOS were the first bank to reduce their excess/returned item charges etc on all credit cards bank accounts etc to Ј12 well before the OFT were consulted
• We do not add mythical charges if you go over your limit whilst using your switch card etc (RBS do this and this can add another Ј20ish to your charges)
• All retail customers in RBS & BOS are credit scored when you open your account and your provided with limits of where the max amount of borrowing we would provide so your request is only referred if you are asking for something above this limit
• If you are cancelling a D/D you must do this at least 5 working days before it is due to be paid as it has already entered the process and will most likely be debited nexgt time anyway so watch out
• Please do bear with all Bank staff when opening accounts and money laundering checks as these requirements have been bestowed upon us by the FSA and we must adhere to these. We would prefer to just open an account but we cannot do so
• It also really annoys me when people go on and on about the amount of time it takes to clear chqs and why they cannot have their money sooner.. In actual fact the paying bank (i.e. the bank of the chq writer) provides the funds to the bank of the account the funds are being paid into well before it is debited from the writers account. Every bank works in this way and I do agree that this requires review but for all the banks as a whole.

Happy to help.
Cheers
M

• IF YOU ARE AN RBS CUSTOMER, PLEASE READ THIS!
  Some of you will be more surprised than others to read this! When your branch cold calls you and 'invites' you in for a "Customer Service Review", beware! This is not intended in any way to benefit you, but rather the bank, who will attempt to sell you RBS products. Let me talk you through the process.
  1) The person who has called you has selected your name from a HUGE printout of branch customers, and has quickly checked from your account transactions and balances that you could be sold a loan, mortgage, credit card, etc. When they speak to you on the phone the will suggest that the CSR would be beneficial to you by saving you money. Sounds tempting, doesn't it? An appointment is arranged for you with one of our Customer Advisors.
  2) Before you arrive for your appointment, the CA trawls your accounts for the past year. We can see details of all your switch transactions (eg how much you spent in Ann Summers last month...) and direct debits, salaries paid etc. It is very easy to tell if you have loans, mortgages, credit cards elsewhere. The CA will then work out what they will try to sell you.
  3) At your CSR appointment you will be asked to give details of all your outgoings and debts owed, including other loans and store cards, just to firm up the info the bank has on you. They will then try an tempt you into buying RBS products. The CAs earn commission on what they sell to you and are targeted using a points system. At the top of the points tree are mortgages and loans. At the very bottom are instant access savings account. Guess what you'll be pressurised to buy?
  Bearing in mind that, with the occassional exception of mortgages, just about all financial products are better sourced away from your high street, there is no need for you to enter the CSR process. You can ensure this by writing to your branch and insisting that you are taken off the email/mail and telephone contact lists.
  This approach has made RBS a lot of money, so much so that HBoS started doing something similar not so long ago. I would ask you not to take out your rigtheous indignation on bank staff. The CAs need the commission as, like all branch employees, they get paid a pittance. Most of the money made seems to go towards the astronomical salaries of Sir Fred Goodwin and the Bank's numerous directors.
• Hi there, This is my first post!!! (But I've been reading MSE for a long time!)
  I used to work for HSBC and can confirm a couple of things as mentioned above : -
  1) Customer Reviews are just for sales for the banks, and the process used was pretty similar as Convenience101 laid out! A credit score is carried out at these also!
  2) Cheque Clearing Process - as Ferrett said also!
  3) CS/frontline staff are given targets to sell a certain amount of certain product in a monthly period - at your 6monthly review if you don't perform you may not get your annual salary increment!
  4) At my time every customer should have five products with HSBC - i.e. Current a/c, Savings a/c, Home Ins, Credit Card, Life Ins, Pension, Loan etc. etc. take your pick!!!
  I worked for this bank for over 10 years, and just couldn't do it any more - I used to love my job and had progressed really well but it became more and more about sales and profit than customer service!
• I am an employee of Lloyds TSB, so the following holds true for LTSB, but may also be true of other high street banks.
  When applying for a loan, if you have seen a better rate elsewhere, tell them. Provided you can give the name of the company, the APR and the monthly repayments then rates can be lowered to match or beat the competitor offer.
  To avoid an early settlement fee on a loan, pay all but the last month's direct debit amount off. Overpayments are penalty free, but an early settlement fee applies if paying the loan off in full.
  And Finally...
  To stop a cheque that is lost / lost in post is free. To stop a cheque for any other reason there is a £10 charge.
  Should anything else spring to mind then i'll add later.
  Cheers
• I used to work for a bank on telephone loan applications. When you call for a loan, they try and cross sell you other products(like credit cards etc) and also "upsell" the loan amount (so you only want 5K but they discover that you have 5K on another banks credit card so they offer you 10K loan etc). They also make more money on the repayment protection than the loan itself so thats why they really push it. They use rapport building sales techniques to get you to trust them so that you think what they suggest is a great idea. When I was there, we were heavily targeted on cross sell, upsell and PPI sales. I think its wise to remember that no bank has your best interest at heart.
• I work for Nationwide Building Society, and in all honesty I enjoy my job. I feel that it is one of the better financial services providers in the UK - its a mutual, charges overall are less than other high street providers (for instance, loans, credit cards and overdrafts are cheaper than the high streets, and savings rates are generally better on a like for like comparison (i.e - no stupid terms and conditions to actually get the rate advertised!), some things are not charged for (use your card abroad, cheque withdrawals over the counter and cancelling cheques, for instance) and the culture is better for employees (I used to work for Natwest too and the training and opportunities are better in Nationwide, as well as staff morale).
  Granted, it is harder to get full facilities with a current account for instance because of the credit scoring system - as a smaller organisation the level of risk involved has to be lower than what natwest etc can offer, but in general the products are better and I honestly feel that the service is better too because of the training available to staff. When I worked at Natwest we read a couple of leaflets on products then were put straight to work.
  Some things are more efficient however, I know staff in Barclays and RBS and we have swapped info on how things work. I can say for sure that if fraud hits your account then you will get your money back quicker than if you banked with any other high street provider - we average 48hrs for a return, RBS can take 6 weeks. Not cool if you have your mortgage to pay! Secondly, getting your money back from a direct debit - RBS has told me on my personal account they wont claim it back on my behalf and I had to claim it off the company who took it - which practically ignores the Direct Debit Guarantee! We get it back in your account in 24hours.
  Thats not to say there arent problems - rapid growth and re-organisation has meant that there arent enough staff - this should be addressed by the Portman/Nationwide merger due at the end of August (subject to approval by the FSA). Whilst some Portman or Nationwide branches will be closed as a result - this is only because there is a branch of either remaining open within a very short distance so access to a branch will not be affected (despite what SOME high street banks have claimed! Naughty!). It simply doesnt make sense to have TWO branches of Nationwide within 300yards of each other!
  My only complaint with working for Nationwide is that some customers expectations simply cannot be met, who then complain and say they will take their account elsewhere when they will encounter the same problem at ANY finanical institution in the UK - such as ID requirements, over the counter withdrawal limits, what exactly constitutes a driving licence for ID (its the PAPER AND THE CARD PART!!!), high value transactions and their ID requirements, the Data Protection Act, and many more. As we deal with money and personal information, im not going to simply hand out any of it without being sure I can because a) ill lose my job b) be fined personally, and c) bring my employer into disrepute. Whilst it means customers may encounter inconvenience when dealing with their own account - how much more pee'd off would you be if I let someone walk out with your entire wage packet. Id suggest it would be mighty annoyed at the very least.
  In a similar vein - please dont take it out on staff if you are annoyed with a Nationwide Policy - the staff serving you didnt make it up and are probably as frustrated as you are! Ask for it to be noted which the staff will gladly do on the member service log (which actually is read and acted upon at head office). As an example - I once had a woman and her daughter, who wanted to make a £10000 transfer from the daughters to the mothers account. The daughter was 14 and had lost her card, and had no ID, however, mother insisted it had to be done anyway. Sorry lady - no card, no id, then no transfer. This is because if there is no card/book present during a transaction then it is put on an audit listing, which can only be signed off if full ID is taken at the time and a new card/book is ordered. Even then, the maximum withdrawal/transfer/cheque amount is £500 (- the same branch cash withdrawal limit unless pre-ordered). If they arent signed off the the branch fails its audit requirements and then we get a lot of trouble in the branch.
  With regards to charges, Nationwide is taking a strong no refunds policy and to go through the process as described on here for instance will lead to your account being closed. Nationwide prides itself on its customer relationships and this is seen as an irreparable breakdown of this relationship (or so I read in a Newspaper).
  Aside from that - any questions just holler!
  Jo x
• 'supermarket staff, tell us your reduction policy' and 'disguised own brand' hunts,
  um, sorry to go off topic but is there a link to this thread - I missed it and now can't seem to find it.
• I recently resigned from the Natwest (part of the RBS group) as a cashier. I left because I was disgusted with their unscrupulous sales approach. As a humble cashier I had only a basic insight into how they worked.
  Three tips:
  1) Don't blame the staff - they are under ENORMOUS pressure from management to get sales leads! That said...
  2) One of the banks favourite customers are people making minimum payment on their credit cards -any credit cards.
  It was compulsory for me as the cashier processing the credit card minimum payment to approach the customer to ask if they would be interested in talking to a Customer Advisor (sales person!) about turning the credit card debt into a loan.
  It didn't matter how many times the customer had been approached before, my manager told me if the customer complained about being harrassed, it should be logged as a customer complaint which was fine, as we are targeted on logging a minimum number of customer complaints per week!
  Tip: for a quiet life - just say firmly 'no thanks' - the cashier approaching you almost certainly does NOT want to approach you - but they are required to do so as a condition of their employment. If they persist, then complain. This will cost them many, many minutes after you have gone, in logging your complaint! Make sure you insist that they DO log your complaint. They won't like that at all! It's a lot of work!
  3) Bank charges. The bank are very sneaky... If you overdraw without an agreed facility - or you go over the facility - they will automatically charge you Ј28 for going overdrawn. They won't necessarily tell you about this charge until you get your statement.
  Here's the sneaky bit: Suppose you are overdrawn by an end of month direct debit - which if they decline it they charge you Ј38!. If this causes you to be overdrawn at the end of the month - that raised a Ј28 charge. THEN if your don't notice - 3 to 5 days later, your account rolls into the next monthly business period, (which is NOT the end of the month, but a few days later) and if you are STILL overdrawn - they will raise another Ј28 charge!
  Furthermore: these Ј28 charges are raised a month in arrears! So when you finally get a statement telling you they are going to charge you the Ј28 at the end of that month, just be aware, there may be ANOTHER Ј28 charge waiting for you the following month! For being overdrawn for about 5 days at the wrong time of month!
  Example: A direct debit for Ј20 is declined on January 30th. They raise an immediate charge of Ј38 for declining the DD. This causes you to be overdrawn by say Ј10.
  When you get your statement on February 5th it shows you were overdrawn, the Ј38 charge and your account overdrawn by Ј10. It will advise you that a Ј28 charge will be taken at the end of February for being overdrawn in January.
  BUT between January 30th and February 5th, the bank changed business periods. AND if you didn't notice and you were still overdrawn by the time of the statement - (5th February) - then when you get your March 5th statement they will advise you of ANOTHER Ј28 charge for being overdrawn in February! See?
  What's more, if you forget the Ј28 charge coming out at the end of February. and it causes you to overdraw again... the whole charging cycle begins all over again!
  I told you it was sneaky!
  One final point - its a few months since I left - so things might have changed - even the Bank Branch Managers have NO power to refund charges if you complain about them! UNLESS it's a clear 'Bank Error' - they took away discretionary refunds some time ago - because it was costing too much! Now, that may have changed since I left as I say, but when I was there, they were taking discretionary refunds away from the local branches and tightening up the rules at their lending/charging centres where the decision is taken.
  Tip: So I suggest, don't waste your time and effort complaining at branch level about your charges. They can't help you. (unless as I said, it is definitely a bank error). Write to them using the templates Martin has published.