[Closed] Need a bank for business

don't know about manager but Tide business banking was excellent when i used it for a temporary business

Do any banks offer that for SMEs these days?

I think I had named person when I was using Cater Allen, but that was 7 years ago now. Suspect it's all call centres these days.

What do you want to do that couldn't be done by a service team? Any relationship manager would have the same authority to act as the service team.

I want someone who I can all with all my questions: banking problems, online banking problems, products and services that may help the business etc. Someone who will know the business and its situation.

I found with Barclays for example the online banking was pants, the service team didn't know how to use it, so that was another call centre, admin things were tediously laborious and often required a different call centre, the team were also pretty useless at providing advice unless it was very basic stuff they could look up from a list of FAQ. There were so many of them they didn't know me from Adam.

Pants, plus I had to pay them for it.

I suppose all the big banks will be the same, what about some of the smaller banks ?
Starling, that comes to mind, is that still going as a bank, or is it now owned by a big one ?

Cater Allen were a small private bank - so the service was in theory better than a big retail bank, and I never had any issues with them.

All the big banks are broadly the same with SME’s. As you get bigger you’re more likely to get some kind of relationship manager.

The direction of travel is more digital / less personal interaction broadly. I work for a large bank and there are a number of SME banking services that are very digital focused either released or imminently about to go live. They aren’t just pure bank accounts though, they’ll help with cash flow forecasting and prompt you on things due to come out / balances you’re sat on and not doing anything with etc. Edit - this is driven by what the majority of customers are asking for. People are also voting with their feet and not using branches much or going into business centres.

I’d imagine Tide / Starling and similar are very app focused too / have call centres, but I maybe wrong.

Out of interest what do you actually need to speak to someone for? Notice loads of people I speak to with businesses call their bank with questions nothing to do with actual banking in which case a business advisory service may be of help. I would class making a business plan, cashflow forecasting and invoicing etc as nothing to do directly with business banking. Banking is not like the old days with a semi smart bank manager with great general business knowledge. These days branches are basically sales rooms.

For combo of two if the business is in any way tech / innovative you could try SVB: https://www.svb.com/uk

Run multiple businesses with complexity and we hardly ever have to speak to bank.

I use HSBC and I have a named contact (although I don't know if they are still there as it has been a while since I have spoken to them). I have also seen an actual real bank manager (last year so quite recent) in branch.

Sadly it does seem to be an inevitable trend with banks just becoming online bots or apps, rather than humans on a phone or in person. I'm just a bit old school and much prefer human interaction, even if its on a phone, rather than typing into a chat box or pressing x, y or z.

My experiences with Barclays as an example, were me having to call them and ask how to use their terrible online business banking solution (it was a white label version of the Citi bank one that was really bad) Other examples of needing to speak to them would relate to wanting to make payments to some dodgy third world countries. The other thing they all failed at was international banking, couldn't seem to send / receive funds between two businesses in two different countries without large charges even if the business were related.

Generally the charge you are talking about when sending funds between businesses in different countries is because there isn’t a clearing system to do that (unless it’s Euros in the Sepa zone - which is cheap).

Inevitably there will be a correspondent bank involved and swift messages between all the banks in the chain to enable the payment.

If you’re sending local currency and a high volume of overseas payments then some banks could use Global Disbursements where the sending bank uses their local banking presence in the beneficiary country to enable it to be out into the local clearing system using their internal network. Not many banks have this though - you’re talking HSBC / Citi / Bank of America / BNP pretty much.

What size transfers are you making? If under £10k why not just use something super simple like Transferwise: https://transferwise.com/gb/business/

Will be cheaper than your bank. Would keep it separate than your main account.

I’m a relationship manager with a large bank. Possibly a bit of a dying breed, as mentioned above a lot of services going digital now. Most high street banks you’re unlikely to get an assigned RM if you’re turning over less than £1m.

Might be worth trying Handelsbanken as they always sell themselves on personal service, but they like secured lending so won’t be interested in clearing only.

RBS ? 😆 😆

This is my brother in laws brother. I think they've moved it all to the US as theres less chance of the powers that be hiding/shredding the facts. A small litigation, about £2 billion.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/17341167.rbs-critic-neil-mitchell-spends-20-000-billboard-criticising-bank/