Identity theft, why prevention is better than cure!

November 25th, 2011 posted by: jon.hall

This blog might have the feel of a community message!

I just wanted to recount a conversation I had with a friend of mine who also works in financial services.

He discovered that someone had used his name and date of birth to attempt to open a Littlewoods store card with the address of a house with a similar name just down the road. Fortunately the verification process rejected it.

In a panic he requested an up to date Equifax credit search be run by his firm hoping that it wasn’t too late. His credit file remained impeccable however there appeared to be big drop in his credit score. He thought it would be easy to report what had happened and find out more information from the credit bureaus, how wrong he was!

Consistently across all 3 credit companies, Experian, Equifax and Call Credit there was no easy way of contacting them in this time of distress when a potential fraud had been attempted against him. All of them required payment for credit reports, further payments for credit score and non offered some-one to talk to! All required the setting up of monthly subscription services with no easy way of subsequently cancelling.

Each had their own individual characteristics;

  • Call Credit, your payment allowed a single view of the report before it disappeared forever.
  • Experian, which was the most detailed and user friendly, made you set up at a monthly ongoing cost after a free trial.
  • Equifax, was the worst seeing as he needed to talk to some-one there about the scoring. Their offshore call centre was set up to push people online without the knowledge of understanding what a credit score was.

In addition it was easy for him to report the problem to his bank, who very kindly sold him a monthly insurance contract.

Finally, through a business Equifax contact, he got his concerns allayed but it shouldn’t need to be a case of ‘who you know’

In summary, the message in this tale is if you think you’re taking care in protecting your identity then its worth taking even more care as sorting out an ID theft issue takes many hours and those that should be on your side do tend to view it as a sales opportunity. Its also disappointing that personal contact in times like this is so hard for an organisation to realise is critical.

One final recommendation though; CIFAS which is the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service offers a service which flags that extra validation is required when someone is trying to set up a credit agreement. This is £12 a year and seems reasonable for some added assurance.

I hope this helps you in a small way get yourself protected a little better or at least be prepared for the way some firms might handle you in a difficult time.

Jon

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Local Leadership

November 8th, 2011 posted by: jon.hall

I’ve been really keen to stress the importance of leadership when meeting all the Saffron managers this week.

By ‘leadership’ I’m referring primarily to;

1. following instincts to ensure members best interest are served;
2. getting the right things done rather than just getting things done and
3. describing the ‘tomorrow’ we are all working towards to their team rather than always focussing on today.

However it was clear from my discussions with the Branch and Contact Centre managers that these characteristics already described them.

If you’re a member using a branch or have rung our Contact Centre recently I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

My job is to motivate but this week that motivation has been a 2 way street!

Jon

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Fresh Start ?

November 1st, 2011 posted by: admin

It’s an odd sensation to feel like a new boy despite over seven years at Saffron but being appointed as CEO has filled me with all the excitement of a fresh start.

I decided to look back on some of the advice we provided my 13 year old daughter when starting a new school, tailoring them to the workplace I was left with the following guide;

1. If you’ve got friends in a similar position then ask them for advice. They’ll have been through it all before so might be able to help you - if they’re being nice!
2. Be yourself! It sounds simple, but people will respond much better to you if you just act natural.
3. Get organised!
4. Having early nights makes a difference and you’ll find it easier to get up in the morning!
5. Pay attention to what your staff and members are saying.
6. Make an effort to chat to people.
7. Don’t panic - you’ll be absolutely fine. Remember it’s a fresh start for everybody.

Not a bad list although I’ve left out ‘Try and do your homework the night you get it so it doesn’t pile up.’

Interestingly there are 11 new CEO’s according to the Building Societies Association in 2011 so there is plenty of opportunity to share experiences and I’ll return to this theme as new ideas are introduced into the mutual sector.

So a fresh start? Yes on a personal level but it’s paramount that the strong foundations developed at Saffron over its 162 year history are protected and its positive reputation built on. I’ll be heavily influenced by the fact that 10 people share a positive service experience but a negative one is spread to 17. I’ll be single-minded about the Saffron experience being a positive one that can be shared amongst its existing and new members.

Thanks for reading my first CEO blog and I really hope you’ll find the content engaging and I look forward to hearing back from you.

Jon

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T is for the Trouble with austerity…

September 20th, 2011 posted by: Andy Golding

T is for the Trouble with austerity….

Today I had lunch with Andrew Ellson the personal finance editor at the Times. Clearly both of us could wax lyrical about the economy for hours, exchanging sometimes similar and sometimes differing views on the fragility of the UK economy, the mess that is currently Europe and not forgetting the USA, who usually keen to lead are struggling to pull themselves from the mire, let alone show the rest of the globe how its done.

However there was one rather worrying fact upon which we definately agreed. The trouble with austerity is that is can become a self fulfilling prophecy.

You see, for some time now we have all been hearing from senior government officials, what a tough time is in store for the next few years. The cull of public sector spending, tough measures on benefits, an acceptance of high inflation with low interest rates, the potential for unemployment to rise etc. etc.

When you add to this the constant gloom that bankers and economists love to dish out around how little your house could be worth in a few years and how you won’t be able to pay your mortgage anyway; it is no surprise that as a nation we are feeling brow beaten.

Then there is the systemic issues in the Eurozone, which some would have us believe will lead to full scale economic armageddon and the outlook is pretty gloomy.

I have talked previously about markets being driven by sentiment, well with the sort of sentiment we are being dished up at the moment, there is only really room for a negative outlook.

Perhaps is is time for the PM and Chancellor to read a few “good parenting” books. These are full of evidence that if you use negative enforcement with a child you are likely to get a negative outcome. If on the other hand you encourage, motivate, make bold positive statements, you are likely to get a better response.

Perhaps we have had enough of the negativity for the time being and government should tells us what to do to help. Work hard, spend and save as normal, be proactive, entrepreneurial, enterprising and help us as a nation to visualise a better future, rather than a gloomy present.

Of course I am over simplifying, but money in the till of a business, means wages in the pockets of the staff, which means money in the till of the business and so on.

The alternative is that we all hunker down and hope eventually things get better. They will but it will take much much longer that way!

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S if for stemming the flow….

August 8th, 2011 posted by: Andy Golding

I think this round up of the latest economic news is useful - With thanks to www.moneymarketing.co.uk

Markets in the Far East fell last night although the FTSE 100 is holding up this morning as politicians continue to battle the debt crisis.

In the Far East markets reacted badly to news of America’s downgrade with Japan’s Nikkei 225 falling 2.18 per cent to 9098 by close while in China the Shanghei Composite index fell 3.77 per cent to  2527.  

By 8.50 this morning the FTSE 100 had recovered from early falls and was up 0.63 per cent to 5280.This follows a fall of nearly 10 per cent last week.

Over the weekend, Standard & Poor’s announced it had downgraded America’s credit rating for the first time, from AAA to AA+, due to concerns about the way American politicians are responding to the escalating debt crisis. In Europe, the European Central Bank is to purchase Euro member state bonds in an attempt to allay debt concerns.

Latest news on the debt crisis:

  • The Telegraph reports that Bank of England governor Mervyn King is expected to reduce the UK’s target range for growth.
  • In an interview with The Sunday Times, Business Secretary Vince Cable warned that Britain could face a double-dip recession but rejected comparisons with the 2008 credit crisis.
  • The European Central Bank has announced it is purchase Euro member state bonds in an effort to halt financial market contagion as markets opened this morning. A statement from the ECB, released yesterday, welcomed deficit cutting measures taken by Italy and Spain and welcomed a statement from France and Germany which pledged that the European Financial Stability Fund would take over paying for the purchases when it is fully up and running. The move is seen as a watershed moment because until now the ECB has maintained that responsibility for dealing with the Euro crisis rests with National Governments.
  • Italy brought forward a pledge to balance the country’s budget from 2013 to 2014 to enable the move. Interest on Italy’s 10 year bonds reached 6.08 per cent on Friday, after hitting 6.4 per cent, the highest level since 1997. Spain’s bonds were offering 6.05 per cent. Some economists argue that anything higher than 7 per cent makes borrowing to fund Government spending unsustainable.
  • On Sunday Angela Merkel appeared to support the move in a statement with Nicolas Sarkozy saying it was up to the ECB to decide when there was a material risk to financial stability. However, its been reported Merkel complained to Chancellor George Osborne in a phone call about European Commission President Jose Manuel Borroso’s claim more action was needed beyond what was agreed by European leaders in July.
  • The IMF has welcomed the statements from the European Central Bank, Germany, France and the G7.
  • Amid reports accusing European leaders of being absent in a crisis, George Osborne also called G7 leaders on Saturday from his holiday in California, stressing the interconnected nature of the European and American debt crises. Speaking to European Monetary Commissioner Ollie Rehn he suggested launching Eurobonds in exchange for more control over member states’ domestic economies.
  • Standard and Poor’s is warning this morning that Asian sovereign ratings could face downgrades if global financial markets deteriorate. The ratings agency says its downgrade of US debt to AA+ on Friday would not weigh on Asian Governments ratings in the near term but added Asia-Pacific economies would have to support their domestic economies.
  • The Australian market dropped 2 per cent as it opened and briefly rallied during the day but at close the S&P/ASX200 index was down 2.9 per cent.

 

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R is for relief……

August 3rd, 2011 posted by: Andy Golding

The other day, in one of the rare moments of him being either awake or in the house at the same time as me, I was having a surprisingly sensible conversation with my 16 year old son about the US economic issues.

 

He wanted to know why it mattered if the US defaulted on its debt. How would it affect us and why it was such big news.

 

Now he is a bright lad, but more on the literacy side of the equation rather than numeracy. So how do you go about explaining the huge ramifications of the US not finding some solution with its looming deadline. I mean default, loss of AAA rating, severe economic shock, reinvigorated banking crisis, major liquidity shortage all sound bad, but what do they mean to a 16 year old English student?

 

So I told him of some information that I was aware of in the 2008 height of the banking crisis here. I explained that the UK treasury came very close to having to call for ATM networks across the UK to be suspended and asked him what he thought would happen if that had actually been made so. People would panic he told me confidently. They would look for other ways to withdraw their cash, more than they needed; they would stock pile everything they thought was worthwhile he went on.

 

You see where I am heading with this. In the UK a plague of shoppers can decimate the shelves of Tesco’s if snow is forecast. The US were looking down the wrong side of a barrel full of something much worse than snow. Teachers, soldiers etc. not getting paid, they stop spending, those they would normally buy from now not getting paid and so it goes on. When you blend in the sheer complexity of the global banking system and the importance of the US in that system, the inevitable “crunch” 2 would soon see large scale institutional failures, without this time a government capable of bank rolling the stay of execution.

 

This may all sound fairly dramatic but compare the US to an individual who has lived the high life on credit, safe in the knowledge that they could get another card, do a balance transfer, get a pay rise or some other plan. Then suddenly the credit card companies all start saying no. Then worse hours are cut at work and income goes down, suddenly required outgoings are more than income, which invariably ends in default, debt restructure or very long term pain.

 

So R is for relief that the US has restructured and remains in business as usual mode for the time being. But long term the debt must be paid back or the economy must grow rapidly to minimise its impact. The latter is unlikely so the US residents are in for a long hard slog in my view.

 

We have had similar stories recently for Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and now Italy. Eventually someone will pull the plug of one or more I think. And by the way the UK isn’t in great shape either.

 

Thanks he said, I understand it a lot better now, looking thoroughly depressed and probably wishing he had never asked.

 

 

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Q is for quality – easy to say, much more difficult to deliver!

June 21st, 2011 posted by: Andy Golding

What to write for my “Q” blog was taxing me for a while, so I sent out a plea for help on Twitter over the weekend and a good few of the suggestions that came back were for something on quality of service in financial services.

 

This is a subject that FS business’s talk about a lot. Many invest millions of pounds measuring and tracking all kinds of satisfaction metrics. Despite all that though, we still read about the UK’s largest banks and their hundreds and thousand of complaints, so the garden is clearly not rosy.

 

I remember in the eighties when I was first made a chief cashier in a large NatWest branch in Holborn in central London, I had all sorts of ideas on how I would improve customer service in my branch and mark us out from the other banks in the area.

 

I set to work devising a questionnaire for my cashiers to use with visiting customers, in an effort to find the silver bullet that would enable us to shine. In reality the results told me that expectations were actually pretty simple to fulfil. Fundamentally the vast majority of branch users at that time wanted 3 things:

 

“More staff on at lunchtime so I don’t have to queue”

“A smile always helps”

“Make sure there is a pen on the end of the chain”

 

Now I am guessing that expectations have increased somewhat since those days, but I am willing to bet that some fundamental customer needs still very firmly exist, in common with those three basic requests.

 

Cashing a cheque or paying money into a savings account is not in itself a particularly fun thing to do. Its not like browsing for clothes or sitting comfortably with a cappuchino, so therefore the ability to waste the minimum time queuing or transacting is important. ATM’s, telephone banking and the internet have all added to the control we all have as consumers and allow us to make more of these transactions at a time and in a way that suits us.

 

When human interaction is required a simple smile still goes a long way, as does the feeling that the person providing the service is there solely for you for the duration of your transaction. I often buy a meal deal (sandwich, drink and snack) for my lunch from a well known high street retailer, which just happens to be a few doors up the road from our head office. I think it is fair to say that the service experience is pretty mixed. There are a couple of till staff who pretty much continue with their personal conversation, interrupting their flow only to blurt out the robotic, loyalty card?, bag? and £3.39 please. There is another who is always chewing gum, quite noisily too, which puts me off somewhat and another who is always extremely friendly with polite chatter and a big smile. My boring lunch always tastes a little better when she has served me.

 

For me the modern variant of “pen on the end of the chain” (apart from ensuring that there always is one of course) is that things do what customers expect them to do. The website works properly, statements arrive when they are supposed to, transactions are applied correctly, staff do what they promise etc.etc. The problem though is one of scale. As the banking and financial services world has grown in scale and automated and centralised to drive up efficiency, gremlins have appeared that mean things do go wrong.

 

In fairness they always did. However you could go into your local branch, bark at the manager a bit and it would get sorted quickly and efficiently. Those routes to resolution don’t really exist any more. By way of example we recently hired a new manager for one of our branches who had come from a large UK bank. The bank in question does not have a very good reputation for customer service. As I do with all new joiners to Saffron I spent some time with this individual in her first week or so and discussed the importance here of doing the right thing for our members and customers. I prodded a bit on her previous employer and was shocked to hear that as a branch manager there, with little or no empowerment, she found it just as difficult to resolve problems for her customers, as many will have experienced direct. She had to deal with faceless call centres, no direct line to the person she previously dealt with on the issue, repetition, lack of anyone who could or would make a decision….. sound familiar?

 

All the customer satisfaction metric systems in the world will not solve the basic fundamental issue that sometimes the best way to win customer advocacy is to be really rather good a fixing a problem should something go wrong.

 

We have discussed at Saffron things like satisfaction guarantees. I think this is pretty hard to do in a service business, as we will from time to time make an error. What we can guarantee though is that Saffron will listen and fix things if we get it wrong. I will personally get involved in any matter that we haven’t been able to sort through the normal channels and own its resolution. A bit like the old fashioned bank manger used to do.

 

Service business will always have error rates, perhaps we should keep it simple, queues, smiles, pens and resolution!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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P is for PLEASE tell us what to do!

June 10th, 2011 posted by: Andy Golding

For mortgage holders the current economic lethargy poses a difficult challenge. What should we do about our mortgage?

 

In my view there are some categories of mortgage borrowers who face a very real challenge and in some cases threat. Do any of the following describe you?

 

  • My mortgage is a high loan to value and I am stuck on an uncompetitive rate and cannot remortgage.
  • I am on a tracker and paying very little, so I don’t want to jump too early.
  • I am on a competitive lender variable rate but am worried about rates going up, when is the right time to fix?
  • I am on a fixed rate that is due to expire, should I take another one or move to a cheaper variable product?

 

These are just a few of the comments or views that people regularly share with me and, having seen the results of some research that Saffron has recently commissioned, I can see why.

 

  • 29% of respondents thought they should be looking for a fixed rate, which clearly suggest a view that rates will soon go up.
  • 18% felt they would take a tracker or variable as they are the cheapest deals currently.
  • An alarming 53% though just didn’t know how best to proceed.

With over half of consumers unsure, how best can brokers and lenders advise them? Well for me it always comes down to three questions:

 

  • Are you prepared to pay a bit more for certainty of payment?
  • How big a percentage of your disposable income is the mortgage payment and could you afford it if it went up significantly?
  • What is your view on future interest rates?

Choosing a mortgage rate strategy is always a gamble, one that in fact can be extremely costly if you get it wrong.

 

I remember the late 80’s when rate got up to 15%. During the run up I was selling mortgages at NatWest and we had a fixed rate product at 9.5%. We had queues down the road form my branch in Holborn with people keen to bag the limited availability deal. Rates went up and their gamble paid off. Had rates not continued to spiral though and in fact gone down to say 7%, those borrowers would have been paying more than the market rate. BUT they would have been able to afford their mortgage and keeping the roof over one’s head is for most people the number one priority.

 

Personally I would always advise against betting on the interest rate movement. If your mortgage is small and very affordable by all means take the benefit of lower variable rates, with the knowledge that at some point it will cost you more.

 

If however it is a large commitment and more than 10% rise in the monthly payment would stretch the budget, then maybe certainty is worth paying for.

 

No one can be sure when rates will rise; we can only be sure that they will at some point. So fixed rate mortgages are unlikely to get much cheaper than they are today!

 

So my advice to the 53% who are not sure, is to ask yourself the 3 questions above. The answers should point you in the right direction.

 

 

 

 

 

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O is for…..

May 16th, 2011 posted by: Andy Golding

I don’t normally write blogs entries that are not directly linked to financial services in some way, but this one is about Sunday 8th May and a social event that my wife Helen and I attended.

 

And O is for OMG!!!!!

 

I am in a scheme with Audi UK called “Friends of Audi” where as a brand they have a small number of business people who they are keen to have a brand advocates who provide them with feedback on their cars and customer experience. This is easy for me as for many years I have been a fan of the brand. The cars are hewn seemingly from granite, the reliability and build quality is bullet proof and as a mileage muncher for those of us that spend far too much time in a car, they are great in my opinion.

 

In exchange for this loyalty and advocacy, occasionally Audi UK invite me the odd event. Some months ago a shiny invitation arrived to the Audi Polo Challenge. Now with polo not being a sport I had much interest in, I probably would not have bothered going, but Helen, with clearly a better knowledge of such social circles took charge and said we must attend.

 

So prior to attending I was duly briefed by Helen on what the event was all about. Champagne afternoon tea at Coworth Park, Prince Harry and his team competing against the Audi team in a polo match, dinner prepared by a celebrity chef and entertainment from Paloma Faith. Oh and I had to dress smart.

 

I was impressed with the itinerary so was quite looking forward to the day. Audi collected us in a car, drove us to the steps of the terrace where the drinks were flowing. As we got out of the car, photographers were clicking our photos. We were greeted, given drinks and introduced to some really interesting guests. I have to admit it felt like what I would imagine it feels like to be a celebrity. After an hour or 2 of a seemingly endless flow of champagne and delicious snacks, the Polo was on.

 

I was impressed with that too. Fast paced, ultra competitive and Prince Harry was clearly an accomplished player. By the 23rd chukka, I even understood what was going on. A draw was concluded and the prize giving ceremony ensued. The sun was shining and all was well with the world.

 

Dinner came next, delicious and beautifully presented and served and at 9pm Paloma Faith came on to do her set. She was fabulous, note perfect, funny and utterly engaging. As the night went on, even I found myself dancing (I know probably embarrassing dad dancing, but enjoyable none the less). As the evening went on, Helen and I shared with each other some of the surreal moments from the event. I came back from the cloakroom to find Helen chatting with Paloma, not something you see every day. She found me dancing with JB from JLS. I became a source of cigarettes for the actor who played the Vicar in Rev, he is a secret smoker in real life, just as he was in the series and John Culshaw is a really nice guy.

 

The celebrity meetings went on but far too many to list.

 

As the evening drew to a close, our Audi chauffer returned to whisk us home in discreet comfort.

 

Upon waking on the Monday morning, both Helen and I were in that OMG place about what a fabulous time we had had and with extreme gratitude to Audi UK.

 

It was great to feel like a celebrity for day, although I am not sure I would want my whole life to be that way.

 

This Sunday we did gardening – back to normal!!

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N is for new money…

May 3rd, 2011 posted by: Andy Golding

What to write for an “N” blog has been taxing my creativity for a week or two, but this weekend I received a magazine from Land Rover which contained strange looking bar codes linking to further information about their new Evoque car. A few seconds later and my iPhone had completed the download of the required app to read the code. You hold the phone camera over the code, it reads it and directs you off to a world of content-rich print and video material designed to tantalise the reader about the new car.

 

So what do bar codes and Land Rovers have to do with the future of money? Well the subject of the money of the future and the roll of a branch is the topic of a Saffron Board session we are holding in May. For now of course cheques, cash, standing orders and direct debits are still the norm for most, but my personal belief is that we are really only on the cusp of the technological revolution and the traditional clearing and bacs systems are pretty old kit in today’s terms.

 

The other day my Dad asked me to order a ticket to the 2011 Silverstone Grand Prix online and he asked me if a cheque was OK for payment. I suggested it may be easier for him to just send the money to my account, but as of yet this is not a facility he has with his bank, or at least not one which is user friendly.

 

There is a story dating back to autumn 2008 in which the wife of Alabama computer programmer Michael Ivey sent him a note via Twitter using her pink RAZR phone. But instead of typing the letter “d” at the beginning of the tweet — which would have sent the note as a direct message (a private note just for her husband) — she hit “p”.

Instead of being a slip of the thumb, it sparked a brainstorm. “That’s how you should pay people,” Ivey publicly replied. Ivey’s friends quickly jumped into the conversation, enthusiastically endorsing the idea. Ivey, began wondering if he and his wife hadn’t hit on something: what if people could transfer money over Twitter for next to nothing, simply by typing a username and a dollar amount?

Just a decade ago, the idea of moving money that quickly and cheaply would have been ridiculous, but since 1998 PayPal had enabled people to transfer money to each other instantly.

For the most part its powers were confined to eBay, the online auction company that bought PayPal in 2002. But last summer PayPal began giving a small group of developers access to its code, allowing them to work with its super-sophisticated transaction framework. Ivey immediately used it to link users’ Twitter accounts to their PayPal accounts, and his new company, Twitpay, took off. Today, the service has almost 15,000 users.

That may not sound like many, but it sends a message: moving money, once a function managed only by the biggest companies in the world, is now a feature available to any code jockey. Ivey is just one of hundreds of engineers and entrepreneurs who are attacking the payment ecosystem, seeking out ways small and large to tear down the stronghold the banks and credit card companies have built.

So linking this all back to my opener on bar codes, I really can see a time when a smartphone will be the device for money transmission, including paying for goods at the point of sale simply by the retailer scanning a bar code on the screen. I am also willing to bet that they will become a sort of electronic filing cabinet, with securely held important information, such a driving license, passport etc.

A scary thought: especially having been that person who has driven off, leaving my phone on the roof of the car, never to be seen again.

I am off to the BSA conference later today and having packed in the usual military precision way, credit cards, cash, keys etc. I am not entirely sure that I like the idea of my phone becoming the only important thing I need.

 

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