Merryn Somerset-Webb

If only more banks were more like Wonga

There’s an unlikely new role model for sellers of savings products

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I know a lot of people who work in the financial industry. One on one, they are decent and kind. I’d trust them to look after my handbag in the pub while I went to the Ladies. But you know what? I wouldn’t trust many of them to look after my pension or my ISA. In fact I’m pretty damned sure that if I bought a financial product from them, they would devote themselves to slowly stealing my savings.

I’m not alone in feeling like this. PressChoice does an annual survey asking journalists how much they agree or disagree with the statement ‘the financial services industry conducts itself in an open and honest way’. In 2008 the majority agreed. This year none agreed strongly and a mere 7 per cent agreed a little (I’m assuming this group is mainly fashion journalists married to hedge-fund managers), while 58 per cent now think the industry is ‘actively closed and dishonest’. What a way to have your business described.

But you can’t blame the media. Look at what we see. This is the industry that blew up a housing bubble then crashed it and insisted on being bailed out — showing absolutely no humility in the process. It mismanaged private pensions so badly that journalists have no trouble finding case studies of people who have ended up with pots no bigger in nominal terms than the sum of 40 years’ contributions. It mis-sold so many products that much of the recent uptick in retail sales can be put down to the compensation payments from the mis-selling — and it has routinely overcharged for this mix of incompetence and theft.

Those in doubt need only look at the wheezes still going on today, such as bonuses on savings accounts.

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