Everyday we hear in the papers how the banks have made billions from selling products that their customers don't need or want. Its easy to forget that behind these figures are literally millions of lives which have been ruined.

As the Banking Standards Commission decides how to tackle the culture of aggressive sales practices by banks Move Your Money want to document the true cost of misselling.

Whether it's the bank workers forced to sell junk or face being fired, the families who have been pushed to the edge, or businesses which have gone under, we want to hear your stories.

A former bank worker, who has asked to remain anonymous, got in touch to explain why she’s never going back to the retail finance industry:

“I quit my job in the retail finance industry last year, and I am never going back. Here’s one of the reasons.

About a year after I joined the organization, it formed a relationship with another investment company, in order to 'offer a wider range of products to our customers’. I won’t mince my words: these products were crap. Everyone knew it. My bosses knew it, my customers knew it, I knew it. The returns offered were unimpressive, and the customer service provided by our partner organization was shocking.

The branch staffing structure changed, and I became a Customer Consultant. My job was to gain the trust of my customers, so they would buy what I recommended. I was trained in questioning techniques. I learned how to unsettle my customers in order to manipulate them. I was reminded that at least 30% of them ‘needed’ this hideous investment product, despite the growing list of unhappy and dissatisfied customers who had gone before. The targets grew and grew.

I must explain, I don’t have a problem with ‘selling’. When it is done well, it’s a pleasure for all parties. What offended me was that I had to work on my customers, get them to like me and trust me, and then twist their words into a need for the products I had to sell. I really, genuinely liked and even loved my customers, but it was my job to betray them.

A few months before I quit, a family I had become very close to came in to see me for advice about what to do with their savings of around £40k. I spent weeks working on them, eventually persuading them to invest the money. (I hated the product, but if I couldn’t find £50k a week to put into it I was in serious trouble). So, the £40k was invested and could not be withdrawn.

Shortly afterwards, one of the family was diagnosed with cancer, with little hope of recovery. He had been saving his money for later life, and I had manipulated him into putting it out of reach. I had ‘recommended’ a product I didn’t like, to someone I cared about, and quite possibly marred his last months with his family as a result.

This is just a tiny snapshot of what it was like working in retail finance, but I hope it illustrates how an aggressive sales culture can push good people to do awful things. We’re not greedy, we’re scared for our jobs.”

If you’ve been mis-sold a financial product by your bank, we want to hear about it. Let us know by emailing Jessica@moveyourmoney.org.uk

Students have long led the way in calling for big companies to clean up their act, notably when the student boycott of Barclays in the 80s  led to the bank pulling out of Apartheid South Africa. 

Lately, the finance industry has been patting itself on the back. Despite the rapid approach of the 4 year anniversary of the financial crisis (which cost us £37bn in bailouts), the big banks have been congratulating themselves in style at events such as ‘The Banker Awards’. 

So perhaps it’s time to have a little celebration ourselves. Next week is National Ethical Investment Week, reminding us that where we choose to keep our money can have major repercussions for our communities, our economy and our society. Ethical investing is not just for those with investment portfolios - everyone with a bank account can make a difference by moving your money to a better bank.

It could be easy to assume that ethical investment has little to do with you, or is an optional extra for people wanting to award themselves some brownie points. Where you keep your money is, fundamentally, a statement about what sort of financial system you want for the UK: one that fattens bankers’ bonuses while leaching credit from the real economy, or one that supports families, communities and small businesses. When you move your money to a local, mutual or ethical bank, you make a powerful vote for change, and support a growing sector that cares about public good rather than private profit.

Rachel Matthews, who recently moved her money from HSBC to the Cooperative, said:

I had been putting off moving my money, but I finally got around to doing some reserach and found that I could get much the same interest rates and better service with a more ethical bank, so there were no more excuses. I do not want to support a bank that doesn't pay its tax, and uses this money to support arms dealers and oppressive regimes.

Danni Paffard, Move Your Money UK spokesperson, said:

“National Ethical Investment Week is the ideal moment to take positive action for a better banking sector in the UK, and move your money. It should be the first step for anyone who wants to see a more ethical, balanced and fit-for-purpose banking sector.”

If you think this sounds like a good idea, talk to your friends and family too. 6 million people are part of the better banking sector: join them.

To find out where you can move your money to, click here. 

As scandal after scandal blows up in the papers, and the behaviour of our big banks goes from bad to worse, it’s easy to get despondent about the state of our banking system and the colour of our money.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. There exist financial institutions that will look after your money, reinvest it responsibly, and support the economy and society we would like to see.

One such option are the Credit Unions. Little know in the UK, Credit Union are well established across much of the rest of the world, including America and Ireland.

As not-for-profit financial cooperatives, with a mandate to support their members and grounded locally, they represent a genuine people-focused alternative to the big banks. They are at the forefront of the fight against financial exclusion, keep money circulating locally, and we need to shout about them!

Move Your Money has teamed up with London Community Credit Union to bring you:

Better Banking in Action: A Credit Union Open Day

London Community Credit Union, Hackney Branch, 225 Mare Street, E8 3QE

Date: Saturday 6th October, Speakers 12.00-13.00*

Refreshments provided. Facebook Event.

** £10 for every new account opened on the day ** ID required.

This is an opportunity for anybody interested in the alternative local banking sector and wanting to find out more. Our exciting line-up of speakers will guide us through the history of the Credit Union movement, how Credit Unions work, what they do, and the important role they play in the community, especially in the current economic and poitical climate.

LCCU will also be launching it’s new ‘Credit Champions’ project, working to bring the Credit Union further into the local community and workplaces. Followed by tea and cake.


While politicians and regulators fail to come up with the goods, we can take action to make banking better. Since January 2012, MYM estimates that 50,000 people have joined the Credit Union network, taking membership to over one million.

If you live in Tower Hamlets, Hackney, or any of the surrounding boroughs, invite your friends, bring your family, and we’ll see you there. It’s time to change banks.

* The Credit Union will be open from 10:00 – 14:00 with live product demos and the opportunity to open a new account. Anybody living, working or studying in Tower Hamlets, Hackney, City of London, Islington, Haringey, Waltham Forest or Newham can become a member and open an account. Please bring proof of address (x2) and a piece of ID.

Speakers:

Sian Williams, Head of Financial Inclusion, Toynbee Hall       

Setting the scene for Credit Unions in the UK - the great work they do, the challenges of Welfare Reform and opportunities ahead.

Stacy Mitchell, Senior Researcher, Institute of Local Self-Reliance      

Sharing the inspiring story of the hugely successful US Credit Union movement.

Ian Moseley, Chairman LCCU -  Introducing LCCU and it's story to date
Jonathan McShane, Hackney Councillor - LCCU in Hackney and supporting residents
Adam Farrell, Credit Champions Project  - The Credit Champions project and how to get involved with your Credit Union
Danielle Paffard, Co-founder, Move Your Money UK - Move Your Money, and the value of action.

Alex Gowar from leading p2p finance website RateSetter.com explains how consumers are waking up to the alternatives to traditional banking:

Another week, another blow for UK Savers. If it’s not a major banking scandal, it’s an announcement from the Bank of England that interest rates will remain at the current historic low of 0.5%. This week, data from MoneyFacts.co.uk showed that just 1 in 5 high street savings accounts will cover the costs of inflation. No wonder so few households even bother to save.

Looking through the MoveYourMoney blog I can see that I’m not alone in believing that consumer trust and confidence in traditional banking is currently being severely tested. In this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that we find ourselves in the midst of a personal finance revolution where consumers are increasingly on the lookout for viable alternatives to traditional high street banks, which show no interest in offering value.

At the heart of this revolution is peer-to-peer finance. For the uninitiated, peer-to-peer lending is simply banking without bankers: operators provide a marketplace in which consumer borrowers are matched up directly with savers looking for a better deal. Although peer-to-peer has been around since 2006, the last year has seen huge adoption as borrowers and savers increasingly hunt for better deals. This is recognition that there are credible alternatives available to savers that offer safe and highly competitive returns on hard earned cash. At RateSetter.com, savers can lend for as little as one month at an AER of 3.3%, up to a “5 Year Income” returning 7.2% after fees.

The thorn in peer-to-peer’s side has always been defaults– what happens if the person I am lending my money to cannot repay? The three main providers, RateSetter.com, Zopa and Funding Circle, have approached the issue of bad debt from different angles, though all undertake similar stringent credit checks to ensure only worthy borrowers are approved. RateSetter believes it has cracked the nut of bad debt via a unique ‘Provision Fund’. The Provision Fund is a pool of money from borrower fees which compensates lenders should a late payment, or default, occur. It gives legitimacy to RateSetter’s claim of being the simplest and safest peer-to-peer operator: in fact, RateSetter is the only peer-to-peer operator in the world to justifiably claim that every single lender has received every penny of capital and interest.

Commitment to protecting Savers is what led RateSetter, along with Zopa and Funding Circle to establish the P2P Finance Association. This self-regulatory trade body aims to protect consumers by promoting best practice within the sector. These guidelines can help forge a path to new regulation governing the sector, an issue that needs to be addressed if current growth continues. And there’s no reason to suggest that growth should slow, as economic commentators have recently been far more vocal in talking up peer-to-peer as an alternative to traditional banking systems. Indeed, Director of Financial Stability at the Bank of England Andy Haldane recently suggested that peer-to-peer finance companies could one day disrupt high street banks in the same way as the Googles of the world have changed the face of retail. 

Will grand statements like these worry the big boys of banking? Probably not, they’ve got a lot on their plate at the moment. But in many ways peer-to-peer represents a return to old fashioned principles of banking that seem to have gone awry in recent years: a prudent approach to risk, putting customers first, and delivering great value. Food, perhaps, for thought.