Lloyds Banking Group has appointed Santander's UK head, Antonio Horta-Osorio, as its chief executive. He will replace the current CEO, Eric Daniels, early next year.
Financial analysts, and so called "financial experts", seem on the whole to be delighted with this appointment.
All very well, maybe.
However, is this not the same Santander bank with the highest proportion of customer complaints in the UK (216,158 complaints in the first half of 2010), where complaints came in at the rate of one per minute in the first half of this year?
Jeff Prestridge wrote in the FT is September:
"..administrative problems at Santander including customers not being able to review their accounts online, customers’ savings accounts not set up promptly, as well as suddenly inoperable accounts even though they were set up on an enduring power of attorney.
There's more.
Customers have been designated dead when they are very much alive, customers' accounts have been set up in the wrong name, customers have been held on expensive telephone lines for ages, and branch staff have contradicted instructions given by the bank's call centres.
In terms of administrative meltdown, I've never seen anything like it in more than 25 years of personal finance journalism.."
Has Lloyds (one of the "people's banks") taken leave of its senses?
No comments:
Post a Comment