Banks still ‘pushing products’

In a story that will come as no surprise to anyone who has encountered a ‘financial adviser’ at a bank, Which? has found that bank staff are still under pressure to sell unsuitable products.

The new Which? research found that 65% of bank staff with sales targets felt under more pressure than ever to reach them.

This finding was based on research carried out between October and early December with branch and call centre staff at HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays and Santander.

Which? claim that these findings demonstrated that bank staff are still being driven towards putting “sales before service”.

Sales before service is what you can expect if you take financial advice from your bank.

Unfortunately, we don’t believe that the impending Retail Distribution Review will do much to improve this situation.

Whilst bank staff who give financial advice will be required to hold a higher minimum standard of professional qualification, a quirk of the system known as ‘vertical integration’ will enable an element of their remuneration to remain disguised, as they will be selling their own financial products and the bank will make a profit on the administration of these products.

We often warn our clients to expect a pushy sales call from their bank if they deposit a large amount of money.

Because banks only have their own products to offer to customers, they rarely offer the best value. Taking financial advice from a bank can therefore be very damaging to your financial wellbeing.

Our advice to clients is to just say no if offered a ‘free financial review’ from their bank; nothing is truly free and that 45 minute meeting with your bank could be a very expensive experience once they have pushed their range of expensive and potentially unsuitable products.

Photo credit: Flickr/Julian Bleecker