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usiness Money magazine will be contributing a regular column to LeasingWorld about various aspects of commercial, non-lease, finance, and in turn, will be printing regular leasing stories from LeasingWorld.
Business Money
®
Love your local banker – or else!
If you succumb to the temptation to grab the remote control and see what entertainment is on offer on TV, then succumb to its charms despite the paucity of fare on offer, it is hard to miss the regular advertisements for our big banks. Smiling boys and girls, oozing charm and competence, or animated scenes illustrating the journey, our big banks broadcast a message that is hard to resist.
After all, no bank account means no debit card or access to thousands of cash points, no credit records, probably no mortgage: essentially you are a non-person. Wait for the news programmes however and we see Vince Cable, surely the biggest cabinet misfit by a country mile, trying to tell you that much is wrong with our banks and how he yearns to return to the days of something different. He should be careful for what he wishes. Paying for quite modest everyday items at economic rates is inviting ever more innovative methods every day but the investment required to achieve this rests only within the budgets of the biggest so we need big banks.
That said, those predicting the arrival of the cashless society are wearing blinkers. Cash has a number of advantages, most of which relate to the ease of transfer of value it offers whilst charmingly devoid of any incriminating audit trail. Gordon Brown’s, swathe of tax avoidance measures, foisted upon us in the guise of money laundering regulations, have compelled many to do more business in cash.
This includes the ostensibly respectable who pay window- cleaners, tradesmen, maybe their gardener in readies. Speaking of services rendered to comfort a troubled life, and speak it in hushed tones, that trinket, or candle-lit supper, for that little friend who understands you, might arouse an interrogation of a Gestapo-like intensity should you be so unwise as to brandish a plastic card in payment. But I digress.
March 2011 ■
www.leasingworld.co.uk
So what are the banks to do other than shrug their collective shoulders and accept the undeniable fact that bankers collectively will never be loved though, individually, most have a good relationship with the customers with whom they regularly deal. Even this phenomenon can have its challenges. Many years ago a colleague of mine, a lovely, capable, mild-mannered man, was having a quiet beer in a local pub when somebody came in and started berating him regarding a mishap with his mother’s standing orders. Also drinking in the pub was another customer who resembled a grizzly bear that had suffered several heavy nights on the tiles. He ran gangs that travelled the country doing emergency welding work for the Ministry of Defence, tasks such as slinging up, in 24 hours, tall radar towers. His man management skills were somewhat limited though I doubt he was ever confronted with labour problems. He had a high regard for my colleague, a classic case of the syndrome of which I have just spoken, and when the gentleman who had made a fuss about Mummy’s standing orders made a visit to the toilet he suddenly found himself compelled to debate the case for a bank official to be able to take a pint in peace and quiet. Given that suddenly his feet were well off the ground, that his head kept striking the ceiling, and that his back was rubbing up and down against the wall, he quickly accepted the merits of the case that was being so eloquently made.
Now I am not suggesting that this is the manner in which banks should persuade their loyal, and appreciative, customers to prosecute a public relations campaign on their behalf but the happy relationships portrayed in those television commercials have more than a hint of truth about them: these customers constitute a large, though silent, majority.
My former colleague and his devoted customer now drink in the Pearly Gates Tavern which is a shame.
I would love to introduce one of them to Vince Cable.
Robert Lefroy, Group Editor Business Money
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