A Lloyds Business Banking Experience

9 points by greybox ↗ HN
Trying to remove myself as a signatory on a business account:

1 - I go into a branch, they try to do it but their IT systems fail. I talk to a manager who tells me that I need to do it online anyway and they cant do it in branch (this is after a good hour of the person on the front desk trying anyway)

2 - I login to online banking to fill out their online form (which requires that I fill out details about the business even though im logged in)

3 - They email me a PDF which I have to print out and sign myself (along with one other person, which is hard as that person doesn't live in the same country as me) and then MAIL BACK TO THEM!?

What on earth is going on? Anyone who works for a bank care to share their thoughts on this?

4 comments

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You need to understand that this workflow was designed by overpaid people with bullshit jobs having meetings for the sake of having meetings, there was never any concern about actual user experience nor security.
As an educated guess (I don't work, and have never worked, for Lloyds)...

Funding initiatives to move from paper to online are likely to be given priority based on metrics. These will be things like league tables, customer satisfaction surveys etc.

The question "how was your experience removing yourself as a signatory of a business account?" probably doesn't come up much in any of those, so the workflow has probably never been funded. However, parts of it may have been e.g. all business forms must be available online, or some such.

It's possible that certain actions on accounts must be received in writing (not 100% sure about that). Otherwise, this will probably get resolved at some point but likely through a cost reduction exercise rather than a workflow one.

Anyway, don't see this as some form of justification, it clearly isn't. But I have a reasonable amount of experience in how organisations like this function.

Haha this brings back memories.

It was an absolute mess 3 years ago when I did it - an hour on hold only to find out you’d been given the wrong information, “you have to sign the downloaded form and fax the form, no email” that kind of thing.

It confirmed to me that I’d never Business Bank with them again.

There are lots of employees from the banking industry are talking about this, check it out!