Consumers are deserting major high-street banks in unprecedented numbers after a slew of revelations about unethical behaviour, according to data from the Move Your Money campaign.
Credit unions – small, usually locally based savings groups – have attracted almost 20,000 new accounts in the past six months, according to Move Your Money, while ethical banks Triodos, Ecology and the Charity Bank have all reported a jump in customers.
Building societies saw 78,000 customers sign up for savings accounts in the third quarter alone after Barclays was implicated in the Libor-fixing scandal, which has spread to engulf several other banks.
A hundred thousand!
There are, what, 50 million accounts in the country? That’s on the low side I would have thought myself, adding deposit, savings, current etc.
Why, a whole 0.2% of the accounts have moved!
What a victory for the lefties, eh?
BTW, yes indeed, you should indeed move your accounts if the banks’ behaviour pisses you off. Consumer choice is indeed how this whole market based thing works. My pointing and laughing is at the “unprecedented numbers” claims.
4 responses so far ↓
1 AMB // Dec 23, 2012 at 10:55 am
Another point to consider: how many new accounts to those institutions normally open in that same time frame? 20,000 accounts in six months is just 40,000 new credit union accounts per year. I would readily believe that credit unions open 40,000 new accounts per year ANYWAY and that the number of people moving their accounts or opening new ones is not well correlated with the behavior of the banks.
2 SimonF // Dec 23, 2012 at 11:05 am
I suppose it is unprecedented if previously the number had been consistently zero or there about.
3 Blue Burmese // Dec 23, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Building societies saw 78,000 customers sign up for savings accounts in the third quarter alone after Barclays was implicated in the Libor-fixing scandal, which has spread to engulf several other banks.
And without any other information, the 78,000 figure is useless. Besides, this is savings accounts and there’s a tendency for Building Societies to offer decent rates for regular savers or locking your money in for year or so – it gets them a bit of free publicity in the best buy tables in the papers. Could that explain any increase, assuming that there has been one?
4 Martin Davies // Dec 23, 2012 at 8:22 pm
Opening new accounts is all well and good. Done it many times myself. However my main bank is just one, plus a savings account in a different bank plus a credit union account in town.
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