ANOTHER 60 jobs have been cut as a result of the merger between the Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB, with 45 expected to go in Edinburgh.
The remainder of the losses will be in Rosyth, but all redundancies will affect backroom workers.
The cuts were announced yesterday as a result of the Lloyds Banking Group combining its HBOS and Lloyds TSB retail network offices to create a centralised Scottish centre.
The latest round of redundancies brings the bank's figure to 8,700 over the past 12 weeks.
Source: Edinburgh Eveing News.
Wednesday 29 July 2009
Lloyds Cut UK IT Jobs but Retain Indian Operation
Just last week figures emerged which signalled an upturn in IT contract opportunities within the financial sector. However, it has just emerged that Lloyds Banking Group have cut 370 contract roles with the majority of jobs going in IT support.
These new job cuts will be on top of the 400 contract job losses already announced by Lloyds Banking Group. In total, since the merger of HBOS and Lloyds, 8,200 jobs have been cut including 800 contractor positions. A Lloyds spokesperson could not confirm how many of the fresh job cuts would affect freelance staff.
They released a statement which said, “The group’s policy is to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible to retain their expertise and knowledge gap within the group. Where it is necessary for colleagues to leave the company, it will look to achieve this by making less use of contractors and agency colleagues.”
IT contractors working for the Group have already had their pay rates cut by a total of 20% over the last year.
The bank has been criticised for retaining its workforce abroad despite the high level of job cuts in the UK. Speaking about his issue, the Lloyds TSB Group Union (LTU) said, “Even though both the Bank’s IT and Collections and recoveries operations are directly supported by well over a thousand staff based in India – and the bank are flying into the UK many more IT staff from India who are paid low salaries – the axe has fallen entirely on the jobs of UK staff.”
They continued, “So, for instance, whilst Collections and Recoveries intends to reduce from 8 to 6 the number of sites in the UK that it intends to operate from – existing sites in Andover and Southend – it is insisting upon leaving the three operations in India untouched.”
Source: crystalumbrella.
These new job cuts will be on top of the 400 contract job losses already announced by Lloyds Banking Group. In total, since the merger of HBOS and Lloyds, 8,200 jobs have been cut including 800 contractor positions. A Lloyds spokesperson could not confirm how many of the fresh job cuts would affect freelance staff.
They released a statement which said, “The group’s policy is to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible to retain their expertise and knowledge gap within the group. Where it is necessary for colleagues to leave the company, it will look to achieve this by making less use of contractors and agency colleagues.”
IT contractors working for the Group have already had their pay rates cut by a total of 20% over the last year.
The bank has been criticised for retaining its workforce abroad despite the high level of job cuts in the UK. Speaking about his issue, the Lloyds TSB Group Union (LTU) said, “Even though both the Bank’s IT and Collections and recoveries operations are directly supported by well over a thousand staff based in India – and the bank are flying into the UK many more IT staff from India who are paid low salaries – the axe has fallen entirely on the jobs of UK staff.”
They continued, “So, for instance, whilst Collections and Recoveries intends to reduce from 8 to 6 the number of sites in the UK that it intends to operate from – existing sites in Andover and Southend – it is insisting upon leaving the three operations in India untouched.”
Source: crystalumbrella.
Lloyds’ charges raise a red alert
LLOYDS TSB is charging account-holders who slip into the red a staggering 11 times more than lenders already under investigation for excessive charging, a Sunday Herald investigation has discovered.
The taxpayer-funded bank is taking a huge rake-off from consumers who go overdrawn by £100 or less.
Yvonne Gallacher, chief executive of the debt advice group Money Advice Scotland, has demanded that regulators should now investigate the Lloyds fees.
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"Everyone is pointing the finger at payday loans and the subprime end of the market but I think they need to look into mainstream stuff," she said.
"Banks should have to give absolute examples of the cost of borrowing because some people trust banks without understanding what the impact of fees is going to be.
"At a time when a lot of people are going to become unemployed this is going to become a big issue as a lot of those people will have overdrafts."
Lloyds Group, which is 40% owned by the UK government thanks to a multi-billion-pound bailout by taxpayers, has 22 million current-account customers. The bank refused to disclose how many customers went into unplanned overdraft each month, by how much or for how long, claiming this information was "commercially sensitive".
A spokesman for the group, which is under threat of break-up from the European Commission and from a future Conservative government, said: "The majority of Lloyds TSB's customers who go into an unplanned overdraft position do so by accident, by small amounts and only for a couple of days. The changes to the charging structure reflect this."
However, even in the case of a small unplanned overdraft for a short period, charges are considerably higher than the sum borrowed. A Lloyds customer who went overdrawn by £26 for two days would incur a monthly charge of £15 for the unplanned overdraft, as well as two daily fees of £15. This amounts to a total of £45 in charges for being £26 overdrawn for two days.
Lloyds imposes a sliding scale of daily fees: £6 a day for those overdrawn up to £25; £15 a day for those overdrawn between £25 and £100; and £20 a day for those overdrawn by more than £100.
Someone going into unplanned overdraft by £85 for 10 days would therefore be landed with a total fee of £165. But if the same person went to a payday loan company and borrowed £85 for a month it would cost them on average just £15, meaning Lloyds is effectively charging 11 times more.
Customers with the Bank of Scotland and Halifax, now part of the Lloyds TSB group, also face daily fees for unplanned overdrafts, introduced after the government-backed takeover last year. Customers of these brands with Reward accounts - the main current account on offer since December 2008 - face a flat daily unplanned-overdraft fee of £5 a day. The total number of days a customer can incur this fee in any one month is uncapped, so they could rack up £155 of these charges in a 31-day month.
Abbey, HSBC, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland do not apply a daily overdraft fee. Indeed, HSBC tells customers with its "fair fees policy": "You won't have to pay more in fees than the maximum you are overdrawn by in your charging month, so a £15 overdraft is not going to cost you £50."
Last week the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) announced it would be investigating so-called payday loan companies because of concerns over the high cost charged for providing credit.
Asked by the Sunday Herald why, if it was investigating payday loan companies for that reason, it was not looking into Lloyds' higher charges, an OFT spokeswoman said: "The OFT is currently investigating the fairness of personal current account unarranged overdraft charging terms under the UTCCRs (Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999).
"Lloyds TSB is one of the banks being investigated, and we will be looking at all of its relevant terms."
The Westminster government last week called on regulators and banks to bring about a swift resolution to this ongoing court action over bank charges when it published its white paper on reforming financial markets.
However, as things stand a waiver granted to banks in July 2007 by the Financial Services Authority effectively absolves them from having to deal with most customer complaints about bank charges, until the outcome of the test case between them and the OFT is known.
This means Lloyds could continue to charge its customers up to £215 in penalties each month for years if the banks decide to appeal the court action all the way to Europe - while customers who incur the charges can only register their intention to reclaim them, pending the outcome of the case.
Lloyds made the changes to its terms and conditions that brought in the daily charges in September 2007, two months after the FSA granted the waiver. When we asked if the regulators had approved these changes, a Lloyds spokeswoman said: "We don't comment on confidential conversations with the regulators but we can confirm that we meet all our obligations, including those under the FSA waiver."
The FSA, which is threatened with abolition should the Conservatives win the next general election, confirmed it had been consulted about the changes.
But the OFT told the Sunday Herald it had not approved this change to Lloyds' terms and conditions. Its spokeswoman said: "The OFT has indicated that none of the banks' terms (including Lloyds') has received a clean bill of health'." However, she declined to explain why, if the OFT had not approved the changes, it had allowed Lloyds to introduce them in 2007, especially as it was already investigating the bank because it believed its existing charges were unfair.
Yvonne Gallacher is concerned that Lloyds' daily fees are not being properly investigated. She said: "We are concerned that this is not being looked at because of the court case. Against a backdrop of mild recession, I don't think any delay is the right thing to do."
Source: The Sunday Herald.
The taxpayer-funded bank is taking a huge rake-off from consumers who go overdrawn by £100 or less.
Yvonne Gallacher, chief executive of the debt advice group Money Advice Scotland, has demanded that regulators should now investigate the Lloyds fees.
advertisement
"Everyone is pointing the finger at payday loans and the subprime end of the market but I think they need to look into mainstream stuff," she said.
"Banks should have to give absolute examples of the cost of borrowing because some people trust banks without understanding what the impact of fees is going to be.
"At a time when a lot of people are going to become unemployed this is going to become a big issue as a lot of those people will have overdrafts."
Lloyds Group, which is 40% owned by the UK government thanks to a multi-billion-pound bailout by taxpayers, has 22 million current-account customers. The bank refused to disclose how many customers went into unplanned overdraft each month, by how much or for how long, claiming this information was "commercially sensitive".
A spokesman for the group, which is under threat of break-up from the European Commission and from a future Conservative government, said: "The majority of Lloyds TSB's customers who go into an unplanned overdraft position do so by accident, by small amounts and only for a couple of days. The changes to the charging structure reflect this."
However, even in the case of a small unplanned overdraft for a short period, charges are considerably higher than the sum borrowed. A Lloyds customer who went overdrawn by £26 for two days would incur a monthly charge of £15 for the unplanned overdraft, as well as two daily fees of £15. This amounts to a total of £45 in charges for being £26 overdrawn for two days.
Lloyds imposes a sliding scale of daily fees: £6 a day for those overdrawn up to £25; £15 a day for those overdrawn between £25 and £100; and £20 a day for those overdrawn by more than £100.
Someone going into unplanned overdraft by £85 for 10 days would therefore be landed with a total fee of £165. But if the same person went to a payday loan company and borrowed £85 for a month it would cost them on average just £15, meaning Lloyds is effectively charging 11 times more.
Customers with the Bank of Scotland and Halifax, now part of the Lloyds TSB group, also face daily fees for unplanned overdrafts, introduced after the government-backed takeover last year. Customers of these brands with Reward accounts - the main current account on offer since December 2008 - face a flat daily unplanned-overdraft fee of £5 a day. The total number of days a customer can incur this fee in any one month is uncapped, so they could rack up £155 of these charges in a 31-day month.
Abbey, HSBC, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland do not apply a daily overdraft fee. Indeed, HSBC tells customers with its "fair fees policy": "You won't have to pay more in fees than the maximum you are overdrawn by in your charging month, so a £15 overdraft is not going to cost you £50."
Last week the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) announced it would be investigating so-called payday loan companies because of concerns over the high cost charged for providing credit.
Asked by the Sunday Herald why, if it was investigating payday loan companies for that reason, it was not looking into Lloyds' higher charges, an OFT spokeswoman said: "The OFT is currently investigating the fairness of personal current account unarranged overdraft charging terms under the UTCCRs (Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999).
"Lloyds TSB is one of the banks being investigated, and we will be looking at all of its relevant terms."
The Westminster government last week called on regulators and banks to bring about a swift resolution to this ongoing court action over bank charges when it published its white paper on reforming financial markets.
However, as things stand a waiver granted to banks in July 2007 by the Financial Services Authority effectively absolves them from having to deal with most customer complaints about bank charges, until the outcome of the test case between them and the OFT is known.
This means Lloyds could continue to charge its customers up to £215 in penalties each month for years if the banks decide to appeal the court action all the way to Europe - while customers who incur the charges can only register their intention to reclaim them, pending the outcome of the case.
Lloyds made the changes to its terms and conditions that brought in the daily charges in September 2007, two months after the FSA granted the waiver. When we asked if the regulators had approved these changes, a Lloyds spokeswoman said: "We don't comment on confidential conversations with the regulators but we can confirm that we meet all our obligations, including those under the FSA waiver."
The FSA, which is threatened with abolition should the Conservatives win the next general election, confirmed it had been consulted about the changes.
But the OFT told the Sunday Herald it had not approved this change to Lloyds' terms and conditions. Its spokeswoman said: "The OFT has indicated that none of the banks' terms (including Lloyds') has received a clean bill of health'." However, she declined to explain why, if the OFT had not approved the changes, it had allowed Lloyds to introduce them in 2007, especially as it was already investigating the bank because it believed its existing charges were unfair.
Yvonne Gallacher is concerned that Lloyds' daily fees are not being properly investigated. She said: "We are concerned that this is not being looked at because of the court case. Against a backdrop of mild recession, I don't think any delay is the right thing to do."
Source: The Sunday Herald.
Friday 24 July 2009
Lloyds TSB up to its old tricks
I don't mean the big banking tricks (which led them into more or less public ownership). I mean the old tricks of quite outrageous charges for minor misdemeanors -- a punishment out of all proportion to the crime committed.The kind of charges out of which they no doubt imagine they will crawl back into solvency.
Last week, when the son was away in France, a letter arrived from Lloyds bank. Now, mothers are not supposed to open their children's mail, but most mothers can tell a nasty letter from the bank without even opening it.
Which I did.
This letter said that the son had gone overdrawn by £4.35. The penalty for this was an instant unplanned overdraft fee of £15, plus a fee of £4 a day, up to a maximum of 10 fees per month. (This is a special knock down rate from the £15 that you would be charged if you were over £25 overdrawn.)
As the son was away for ten days, if I had not opened it, he would have built up a charge of £55 for an overdraft of £4.35.
Well, you might say, he should not have gone overdrawn. True enough (although usury -- which is surely what this is -- is a moral crime).But there are two more factors which to be taken into account here. First, all his transaction were done electronically. Lloyds could have stopped them (and it's hard not to think that they allow unauthorised overdrafts in order to charge heftily for them later).
But the son had also rung up the Lloyds telephone banking service on his way to France where he was going) to check what his available balance was -- and had kept well within that. Quite who made the mistake is unclear, but it was not necessarily the son.
Ok for us, this wasn't a tragedy. I intercepted the nasty letter and we paid enough cash into the account to cover it. But we are lucky -- and that wouldn't have been such an easy option for many. Can £55 really be a reasonable charge for a £4.35 overdraft for a few days?
Source: TimesOnline
Last week, when the son was away in France, a letter arrived from Lloyds bank. Now, mothers are not supposed to open their children's mail, but most mothers can tell a nasty letter from the bank without even opening it.
Which I did.
This letter said that the son had gone overdrawn by £4.35. The penalty for this was an instant unplanned overdraft fee of £15, plus a fee of £4 a day, up to a maximum of 10 fees per month. (This is a special knock down rate from the £15 that you would be charged if you were over £25 overdrawn.)
As the son was away for ten days, if I had not opened it, he would have built up a charge of £55 for an overdraft of £4.35.
Well, you might say, he should not have gone overdrawn. True enough (although usury -- which is surely what this is -- is a moral crime).But there are two more factors which to be taken into account here. First, all his transaction were done electronically. Lloyds could have stopped them (and it's hard not to think that they allow unauthorised overdrafts in order to charge heftily for them later).
But the son had also rung up the Lloyds telephone banking service on his way to France where he was going) to check what his available balance was -- and had kept well within that. Quite who made the mistake is unclear, but it was not necessarily the son.
Ok for us, this wasn't a tragedy. I intercepted the nasty letter and we paid enough cash into the account to cover it. But we are lucky -- and that wouldn't have been such an easy option for many. Can £55 really be a reasonable charge for a £4.35 overdraft for a few days?
Source: TimesOnline
Beware the 'Easy' home loan offers from Lloyds TSB
Bailed-out bank Lloyds TSB is offering a new three-year mortgage - but it could cost you thousands of pounds more than the cheapest deal, our research found.
Lloyds says its Easy Step loan is "designed to ease the financial pressure of buying a home". It offers a low 2.59% rate for the first year but jumps to 5.59% for the next two.
You'll need to pay a 25% deposit and a whacking £995 arrangement fee. The deal would cost someone borrowing £100,000 a total of £16,765 over the three years.
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That works out more than £3,000 more expensive than RBS's gimmick-free, threeyear deal fixed at 4.39%.
David Hollingworth, from mortgage broker London & Country, warned: "It is important not to get sucked in by a cheap headline rate. The key is to look at the overall cost of the deal - including fees - to see which is cheapest."
Lloyds also launched an Easy Step deal for buyers with a 40% deposit. It starts at 2.49% but jumps to 5.49%.
That makes it £2,747 more expensive than a three-year fixed-rate of 4.24% currently offered by First Direct.
Source: mirror.co.uk
Lloyds says its Easy Step loan is "designed to ease the financial pressure of buying a home". It offers a low 2.59% rate for the first year but jumps to 5.59% for the next two.
You'll need to pay a 25% deposit and a whacking £995 arrangement fee. The deal would cost someone borrowing £100,000 a total of £16,765 over the three years.
Advertisement - article continues below »
That works out more than £3,000 more expensive than RBS's gimmick-free, threeyear deal fixed at 4.39%.
David Hollingworth, from mortgage broker London & Country, warned: "It is important not to get sucked in by a cheap headline rate. The key is to look at the overall cost of the deal - including fees - to see which is cheapest."
Lloyds also launched an Easy Step deal for buyers with a 40% deposit. It starts at 2.49% but jumps to 5.49%.
That makes it £2,747 more expensive than a three-year fixed-rate of 4.24% currently offered by First Direct.
Source: mirror.co.uk
Letter to TSB July 2009
RE: Your letter – No date or reference number on it
Sort Code: xx-xx-xx
Account: xxxxxxxx
My account was overdrawn in June (caused by Trustcard taking a payment before the due date without any notice). You charged me £150 for this. The high amount caused me to go even more overdrawn which you then charged me again for – you charged me for paying the charge!
I have received a letter (no date or reference number on it) saying that you are going to charge me a further £51 on 3rd August 2009. You expect me to pay £200 for an issue caused by Trustcard?
This is unacceptable.
If you take any more money from my account I will treat it as theft.
I expect a reply to this letter.
Sort Code: xx-xx-xx
Account: xxxxxxxx
My account was overdrawn in June (caused by Trustcard taking a payment before the due date without any notice). You charged me £150 for this. The high amount caused me to go even more overdrawn which you then charged me again for – you charged me for paying the charge!
I have received a letter (no date or reference number on it) saying that you are going to charge me a further £51 on 3rd August 2009. You expect me to pay £200 for an issue caused by Trustcard?
This is unacceptable.
If you take any more money from my account I will treat it as theft.
I expect a reply to this letter.
Letter to TSB Trustcard Visa July 2009
This is my third letter to yourselves.
My credit card statement had a due date of 17 June 2009. I made a payment of £3,000 on 5 June 2009, well before the due date. I then discovered that you had taken £91.50 from my account 2 weeks before the due date of 17 June 2009. This taking of money from my account before the due date caused me to go overdrawn and I was charged £75. Further to that I have now been informed that I will be charged a further £73.37 on 1 July 2009 for this £75 that was overdrawn. The result it that you have cost me £239.87. I do not think this is fair seeing as I made a payment of £3,000 well before the due date.
I have been on the telephone to your customer services department on numerous occasions over the last three weeks and all the people I spoke to, including Marni and Nicole who said they were managers, assured me that it was a mistake and the £91.50 and overdraft charges would be refunded to me.
After hearing nothing I phoned again yesterday (25 June 2009) and was once again told it was a computer problem and the £91.50 should not have been taken. I was then transferred four times and finally spoke with Kerry, a supervisor at credit card services. She refused to help me at all and didn’t seem to understand that my statement had a due date of 17 June 2009. She also said that she had not heard of Marni and Nicole and they had not logged my calls in your computer system.
To sum up, my statement says that I had to make the minimum payment by 17 June 2009, which I did. You took a payment before this due date. If you print a due date on my statement surely that means I have until then to make the payment? Which I did.
I would really appreciate some help with this matter as, to be honest, I have found the experience of contacting your help desk to be very frustrating and the whole matter has got me very worked up.
Thanks
It took TSB 5 weeks to deal with my complaint and they just brushed me off with a reply that explained how good they thought their operation in India was.....
My credit card statement had a due date of 17 June 2009. I made a payment of £3,000 on 5 June 2009, well before the due date. I then discovered that you had taken £91.50 from my account 2 weeks before the due date of 17 June 2009. This taking of money from my account before the due date caused me to go overdrawn and I was charged £75. Further to that I have now been informed that I will be charged a further £73.37 on 1 July 2009 for this £75 that was overdrawn. The result it that you have cost me £239.87. I do not think this is fair seeing as I made a payment of £3,000 well before the due date.
I have been on the telephone to your customer services department on numerous occasions over the last three weeks and all the people I spoke to, including Marni and Nicole who said they were managers, assured me that it was a mistake and the £91.50 and overdraft charges would be refunded to me.
After hearing nothing I phoned again yesterday (25 June 2009) and was once again told it was a computer problem and the £91.50 should not have been taken. I was then transferred four times and finally spoke with Kerry, a supervisor at credit card services. She refused to help me at all and didn’t seem to understand that my statement had a due date of 17 June 2009. She also said that she had not heard of Marni and Nicole and they had not logged my calls in your computer system.
To sum up, my statement says that I had to make the minimum payment by 17 June 2009, which I did. You took a payment before this due date. If you print a due date on my statement surely that means I have until then to make the payment? Which I did.
I would really appreciate some help with this matter as, to be honest, I have found the experience of contacting your help desk to be very frustrating and the whole matter has got me very worked up.
Thanks
It took TSB 5 weeks to deal with my complaint and they just brushed me off with a reply that explained how good they thought their operation in India was.....
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