A Load of Bankers


I've been with my bank (HSBC) since I was thirteen. Why HSBC? Because when I was thirteen, there was a branch just around the corner - in what is now a very expensive and permanently empty wine bar.

Odd how decisions which affect your life decades later are made on one moment's convenience. Which then stops being convenient.

Anyway, I've had multiple accounts before with no problem, so yesterday I tried to set one up for my burgeoning business empire. Not an actual business account for paying expenses, because when you talk and think for a living, your only outlays are pens and paper. No, just a current account for incomings to come into.

They won't let me.

HSBC have a new policy, whereby I'm only permitted to have a second account if I've been in full time employment for at least three months, with a monthly income of at least GBP500.

Yes. They will only let me let them use my money if I don't look like a credit risk - even though there's no risk to them because I'm lending not borrowing.

Which means I can only use them to set up my business...if I've already set up the business. This is known as a Circular Depedancy in computer programmming, Gross Stupidity in ordinary life, and Absolutely Normal where there are more bureaucrats than brain cells.

So I went to a different bank - the Co-Operative Bank. No trouble setting up the account, no impossible tasks to prove I exist, no pressure to adopt an account type called "Plus" or "Extra" which does nothing but cost me money.

Oh, and I get a FREE credit card. A shiny black one. Yippee. Which they're really really keen that I use. So much so that if I don't use it for a three month period...they won't let me use it at all. So there.

Um. Okay. If they want to threaten me with taking away something I don't want but they're desperate I have, I think I can live with that.

There may be no such thing as an intelligent bureaucracy, but you can sometimes shop around for types of stupidity that do you no harm.

3 comments:

  1. My bank isn't so bad. It's not that they are kind and caring... but they offer free online services which means I rarely have to deal with the wankers, er, bankers.

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  2. no idea about the uk banking system, BUT, make sure if y'all decline that credit card it doesn't end up costing you money or fouling your credit rating. bankers are assholes like that, sugar. xoxoxox

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  3. I remember when I bought my first car using a loan from my bank. The car dealer was making a big fuss trying to get me to use their bank to finance my car instead, claiming that it would get me a better deal--it wasn't. My bank loan was better. But just to shut the salesman up, I said see what your bank can offer me.

    Turns out, Wells Fargo denied me, saying that I didn't have enough credit history! Well, I didn't care about them and bought the car using my own bank's loan. 6 months later, I start getting offers from Wells Fargo asking that I refinance my auto loan with them! Well, I wrote them a nasty letter to take their offers and shove it! And those bastards haven't bothered me since.

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