Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Barclays has refunded small business clients an average of £2.50 each after it misled them into opening unnecessary current accounts to access other services such as loans.
About 800 affected Barclays small business clients shared the £2,000 compensation.
The financial services group reported pre-tax profits of £1.5bn in the first quarter.
Britain’s competition watchdog the Competition and Markets Authority has told Barclays to improve the way it treats small businesses. The rules, which Barclays signed up to in 2002, prevent banks from insisting that businesses open or maintain current accounts before they can access other products.
Barclays breached the rules by preventing small and medium-sized businesses that had premium accounts from transferring funds to or from accounts outside Barclays, and also by telling deposit account holders that they had to open a current account as well.
However, the Competition and Markets Authority is prevented from imposing fines for flouting rules.
“The bank’s actions led to unnecessary costs to some SMEs who were made to hold accounts they did not need,” the CMA said.
But it was Barclays itself that turned whistle blower, reporting its transgression to the CMA, and it has since moved to patch the problem, allowing affected customers
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Q&A Ian Rand, CEO of Barclays Business Banking
by Timothy Adler • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Ian Rand, chief executive of Barclays Business Banking, looks down from the 30th floor of his Canary Wharf eyrie in headquarters and sighs.
Rand, the personable boss of SME lending, who has been with Barclays for over a decade, worries that there is a huge divide between most small businesses and the white-hot tech startups raising millions in the City of London beyond his window.
“A typical business is not a fintech in Shoreditch,” he says. “A typical SME is a man or a woman in a white van, with a single shop where they’re struggling to pay the rent and the rates, and they’re finding it difficult to get someone to man the till on a Saturday.”
The ex-army officer, who spends a lot of time on the road speaking to business owners (“Norfolk, Wales, Leicester and Sunderland,” he says, recounting where he’s been to in the last couple of weeks), is responsible for over one million Barclays Business Banking clients. Businesses range in size from startups through to companies with turnover of up to £10m.
Barclays, which currently has a 24pc share of the business banking market, offers a network of 1,500 relationship managers at
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Barclays business CEO worries SME lending bubble could burst
by Timothy Adler • • 0 Comments
Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Barclays Bank business banking CEO Ian Rand worries that Britain’s peer-to-peer SME lending market could be a bubble about to burst.
According to the British Business Bank, the value of peer-to-peer SME lending grew by 51pc in 2017 to £1.7bn.
However, the Barclays business banking CEO says that entrepreneurs turned down for loans by high street banks turn to alternative lenders. This could see the collapse of an alternative lender if lending criteria becomes too lax.
Rand told Small Business: “There were a lot of people that banks wouldn’t lend to who went to Wonga instead. That didn’t work out too well for them or for Wonga. I am nervous that we could be going down the same path with business lending.”
Rand said that new fintech entrants to small business lending do not have the same “duty of care” as high street banks if SMEs get into distress and cannot repay their loans. This is because some are not signatories of the Standards of Lending Practice, which all the high street banks have signed.
Distressed debtors
In the past RBS has been criticised for the small number of distressed debtors that emerged from its Global Restructuring Group recovery
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Barclays launches £15bn Brexit fund to help small business through Brexit
by Timothy Adler • • 0 Comments
Barclays has announced a £14.7 billion lending fund to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) negotiate Brexit and beyond. The Barclays Brexit fund, which is a three-year commitment, will offer the following: – Business loans, commercial mortgages and overdrafts up to £250,000 working capital – Cash flow funding for investment in growth, management buy-outs and
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Interview with Ian Rand of Barclays
by Ben Lobel • • 0 Comments
In this piece, we speak to Ian Rand, CEO of business banking at Barclays, to discuss the cash position of SMEs today, how diversification is key for modern businesses, and why fintech companies have some way to go before they master their customer care. What is your role at Barclays? I’m the CEO of business banking
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Barclays launches £500 million fund for SMEs
by Anna Jordan • • 0 Comments
Barclays is launching a new £500 million growth fund for small and medium-sized businesses in the north of England. The fund is part of the bank’s commitment to support the government’s Northern Powerhouse initiative. It aims to inject investment into businesses across the region with favourable terms for manufacturing, transport and logistics companies, helping them
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