I hope they will enquire not only into new applications for
lending but in the behaviour of banks to their “mass market” small business
customers as well. For example HSBC have been tackling any business with an
overdraft and bullying them into accepting alternative lending – factoring or
invoice discounting usually, often quite inappropriately. Other Banks have done
the same in more limited cases. HSBC culled a swathe of business managers back in the Autumn just a few days after they strenuously denied doing so. Whether the Head office spokesman knew about the cull and was wondering how the heck the journalist I briefed found out about it or whether the Head Office Spokesman had not actually been briefed at that stage remains speculation.
One of the scandals about the ill conceived Project Merlin last
year was that Banks were counting lending figures in their Merlin stats to look
good that were not new money lending at all but were simply rescheduling old lending.Not much was made of the sickly outcome of the project that was announced with vigour and enthusiasm by the government a year earlier. The idea had been to encourage Banks to lend to small business and it failed significantly to do so.
Regarding banking behaviour I have come across cases where the account has been
sent to some kind of “recoveries” department in a cavalier fashion when a competent manager would
have been able to help it steer through choppy waters with no damage to
reputation or loss of capital value.
Shocking behaviour generally, with a bag full of contributory
reasons for it all happening. There is a lot of depth to such an enquiry and i bhope they manage to get to the bottom of some of these points in the short period they have to report.
Other articles by Bob Shepherd
I have a number of articles on line that relate to these
questions you might like to see, with links below.
Bob Shepherd Associates is for business finance and business building. We try to get the components in your business working together and in proportion. The small business owner has a lot of divisions to deal with and to expect to be good at them all is a tall order. Let us see what can be done to maximise the potential of your business.
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