Change your bank

Mentions in the press

Andy Robinson — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:24:19 +0000

We’ve had two mentions for the campaign in the Scotsman recently…

The first is an article on poor customer service in state-owned banks.

The second is an interview with Ken Burnett on his experience of changing his bank from RBS to Co-Op.

Ken’s piece in the Guardian

Andy Robinson — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:32:33 +0000

A great piece in the Guardian weekly from Change Your Bank founder Ken Burnett. In it he talks about how completely unfair the current sustem is and how we all should change our banks by changing our banks.

You can read it here

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I posted my letter to my bank yesterday.

ReubenT — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:58:56 +0000

Being with the Co-operative Bank I’d assumed they would have a sensible policy on pay and bonuses. However there’s no mention of this that I can find on their website, so who knows.

Will keep you posted.

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Why bonuses are bad for business.

ReubenT — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:58:39 +0000

The fact is, bonuses aren’t just wrong, they also got us where we are today. So why go back there? Read my recent blog post on why bonuses are counterproductive to successful business.

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It’s remarkably easy to change your bank.

ReubenT — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:58:22 +0000

Banks that Behave Badly rely on the fact that most us will put up with almost anything before we switch to a better one. But it’s remarkably easy to switch accounts, and consumer organisations such as Which? believe that we won’t get better banks until we start voting with our money.

Ready to change your bank?

Read the Which? guide here, and the MoneySaving Expert guide here.

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5,000 bankers to earn over £1 million

Andy Robinson — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:06:53 +0000

Government estimates are that 5,000 bankers will this year take home at least £1 million. RBS management has threatened to resign if the government stops them from paying out £1.5 billion in bonuses.

The banks just don’t get it. So I’m going to spell it out. It is just simply not fair that you should pay yourselves such excessive salaries when you contribute no more to society and the common good as the thousands of other people who are doing similarly dangerous, difficult and socially useful jobs.

Shareholders need to stand up and say that they’re not going to accept this culture and deliver more profit to the pension and insurance schemes that invest in these banks. But customers like you and I need to stand up to and say that we’re not going to give our business to those banks that are just out to deliver a nice fat cat salary for a selected group of individuals.

Take action now

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Royal Bank of Sustainability

Andy Robinson — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:54:57 +0000

Last weekend was the 1 year anniversary of RBS being publically owned. To mark the occassion, leading organisations and individuals from civil society wrote to Alistair Darling asking him to transform RBS into the Royal Bank of Sustainability by ending it’s current investments in projects that will contribute to climate change.

More here (via WDM)

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Should nurses have to say if they earn over £1 million?

Andy Robinson — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:23:24 +0000

Yesterday’s news that bankers are to be forced to reveal how many of their employees earn more than £1m a year can only be good for the public. So the Change Your Bank Campaign is today calling for other professions to also reveal how many of their employees earn more than £1million each year.

How many of the nation’s nurses are earning more than £1 million? How many surgeons? Or ambulance drivers? How many millionaire air traffic controllers are there? How many Police Chiefs earn more than £1 million? How many charity heads, teachers and social workers are now earning more than £1million?

We believe that it’s only fair that other professions should produce this information too, as it might lead to a better understanding among the public of just how unfair the current system is.

We need your support and help to make the campaign a success. This weekend – talk to your friends about Change your bank and about how you think the current system is completely unfair. Get them to go to the change your bank site and become a fan. Or tweet or blog about the issue.

We can get the banks to change, but only if we start to make some noise about it.

Thanks!

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Bailing the banks out again

Andy Robinson — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:57:39 +0000

Dan Roberts in a recent Guardian article talks about the further bail out of the banks. Incredibly, they’re now getting even more public money than the “crisis” last year. Even more incredible when big bonuses had just been announced – though the government has tried to secure some meagre restrictions on these.

According to Dan, the whole thing has been a big mess, designed to save the government’s face:

Had the government had the courage to bite the bullet last autumn and admit that both banks were, in effect, fully nationalised, it is possible to envisage an alternative scenario. The improved trading conditions would have fed directly through to increased value for taxpayers (rather than leaking out to other investors). We would have avoided hundreds of millions in fees to the advisers who dreamt up all these convoluted schemes. And it would still have been possible to consider privatisating them both (ideally in smaller bits),l when conditions improved.Unfortunately, this would have flown in the face of Treasury orthodoxy that insists the stockmarket is the only judge of long-term value and reliable source of capital. Neither seem to be case at the moment, and instead, the taxpayer is paying a high price to preserve the fiction that British banking is back on its own two feet.

But the government’s solution won’t solve everything. There are still other banks that aren’t affected and are still paying out huge bonuses with a cavalier attitude, regardless of the what their customers think. The whole system needs a shake. And we are the ones to do it.

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What the papers say

KenB — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:33:22 +0000

From CITYA.M. 12th October 2009

The Observer, 18th October 2009

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