Governance, risk & compliance Helping in hard times
The cost of living is on everyone’s lips – and banks are far from immune to the crisis. With interest rates soaring, fi nancial institutions have obvious reasons to keep customers solvent. Barclays recently announced it was hiring 1,000 new staff to help clients navigate the choppy fi nancial waters. Nor is the London giant alone: Virgin Money, for instance, has partnered with charities to help people understand what benefi ts they’re entitled to. Ellys Woodhouse talks to Ryan Walker, the customer service lead at Virgin Money, and Michelle Highman, chief executive at The Money Charity, to understand what obligations banks have to their clients and whether support could persist even after the economy improves.
I
t’s hardly controversial to admit that the last few years have been hard for Britain. While the island nation is not alone in feeling the post-pandemic squeeze, the purse strings feel considerably tighter than elsewhere. Having (so far) narrowly avoided a recession, it is the only G7 nation with a smaller economy than in early 2020 and the only one expected to shrink further in 2023. This is more than a show of economic weakness on the world stage – and is having a direct effect on every penny in each British person’s bank account.
The rise in the wholesale price of natural gas, while felt across the continent, has hit British residents particularly hard as well. Rather than intervening to mitigate the rise of energy prices, the government instead increased the winter 2022–23 price cap by 96% in comparison to the previous year – France, meanwhile, capped its energy price rise at 4%. That’s shadowed by sky-rocketing inflation, which peaked at 11.1% in November 2022 – the highest in 40 years – and only eased to 10.1% in February 2023. Notwithstanding rising food costs and the 1.25%
Future Banking /
www.nsbanking.com
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Shutterstock.com
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