High street banks have denied that there is still a culture which puts their staff under pressure to sell – and in some cases, mis-sell.
A Which? survey of bank front-line staff found that two-thirds feel under more sales pressure than ever, with one-third uncomfortable over the pressure they feel under to push a product. Only 6% of those told to sell more said it was in the customer’s best interests.
Almost half claimed that they knew colleagues who had mis-sold products in order to hit sales targets.
The Which? survey involved interviews with 550 branch and call-centre staff from HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays and Santander. Of that number, 371 said they had a sales role, and 298 said they had sales targets to meet.
Although over 40% said incentives for sales have decreased, more than 80% said the pressure to meet sales targets has stayed the same or increased.
But a spokesman for the British Bankers’ Association said that any incentives are now clearly based on criteria related to customer service, even if staff thought otherwise.
He said: “Selling people products they do not need is not putting the customer’s interests first and therefore is ultimately bad for the bank.
“The banks will be looking at the findings of this small survey – along with their own internal research – to understand why any staff might feel otherwise.”
Barclays has, from the start of this month, begun incentivising staff purely on customer service, while HSBC said: “No one in the UK retail bank, not just customer-facing staff, can earn a bonus without meeting the bank’s values and behaviours criteria.”
A spokeswoman for RBS also said that its staff are rewarded on the basis of customer service. She said: “This is part of our move to make sure that customer service is the top priority for all of our staff.”
Which? said it will hand its evidence on the banking industry to the FSA, the parliamentary commission on banking standards, the Government and to opposition MPs.
Its dossier will include the bank staff survey as well as 120,000 signatures from people who support its Big Change campaign to make banks more consumer-focused and get badly behaved bankers struck off.
Which? chief executive Peter Vicary-Smith said: “Our survey reveals the stark realities of the sales culture that still exists at the heart of the banking industry.
“Senior bankers say the culture is changing, but this shows it just isn’t filtering through to staff on the front line who remain under real pressure to put sales before service, even after incentives are taken away.
“We’re calling on the banks to be much more transparent about their sales targets and incentives.
“We also want to see bankers meet professional standards and comply with a fully independent code of conduct.”
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