Last week Personal Finance published a report about how one in six people are dissatisfied with the service they receive from their banks. This should be worrying for banks. It really is time that they showed a genuine interest in their clients.
Some years ago, when Personal Finance was inundated with letters of complaint from readers about poor service, the reaction of most banks was to shoot the messenger - the result was that advertising was pulled out of Personal Finance, some of which has not returned. But I have become used to this sort of bully-boy attitude from some banks. A recent example of this was when First National Bank (FNB) pulled its advertising on a thin excuse after I would not get cosy with it over the gushy and irritating American financial adviser Suze Orman. She has incidentally got her facts wrong a number of times.
FNB may be interested to know that the number of letters of complaint to Personal Finance about FNB has increased, mainly because it seems to treat clients as if they were stupid. Lately FNB has made a big song and dance about charging nothing to subscribe to internet banking E without telling us as clearly that it has substantially increased internet transaction charges. It has not taken clients long to cotton on and to start complaining.
It's not that FNB is necessarily worse than other banks. They all seem to have their day. At least now the banks are being informed of client dissatisfaction by their own watchdog. And they can't shout down Neville Melville, the Banking Adjudicator.
What perturbs me is that the banks seem to make very little effort to improve their service. Not once has a bank approached Personal Finance and asked us to provide them with complaints about their institution or set up channels whereby complaints to Personal Finance can be handled - something life assurance companies are increasingly doing.
When clients are sufficiently irritated for long enough, they simply go elsewhere. And when they move elsewhere, the loss of business also means a falling share price - as happened at Liberty Life.
When Roy Anderson took over the reins at Liberty, one of the first instructions he gave was that policyholders were to be treated as the most important part of the business. Only by making sure clients were not seen as a necessary evil did the share price get back on track.
Banks will only take note when we, as consumers, start showing them how disgruntled we are by their bad service.
We should not see any bank as a one-stop institution unless it can provide superior service and products at a reasonable cost. If you borrow money or invest money, you should shop around to get the best interest rates.
Every bank accountholder should insist on a copy of the Banking Council's code of conduct and make sure his or her bank is adhering to it.
Next year, when the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services (FAIS) legislation comes into force, we will hopefully see a significant clean up in the financial services industry. It is also legislation to which the banks should be subjected more vigorously. It may help ensure better service for clients.
Banks are only subject to FAIS on deposits invested for more than 12 months. There is a strong view that any financial advice that banks provide, from deposits to loans, should be subject to the legislation. I tend to agree.