Tony Hazell’s article (FA, 17 July) rightly points out the quite shameful way banks treat their deposit customers by often drawing customers into the bank with attractive introductory interest rate offers and thereafter relying on customer’s inertia to shunt them into accounts paying quite derisory rates of return.
One way of addressing this issue is to force banks into adopting a standard deposit rate for savers. We have long been accustomed to a standard variable rate for a mortgage. This will be the rate that banks pay after a particular deposit deal has finished. If banks are forced into giving as much prominence to this rate as their introductory offers they will no longer shunt customers into accounts paying 0.1 per cent, or less, as a standard deposit rate.
It would act very much as a name and shame might. In this way banks would have to compete to retain their existing customer base, and thereafter look after them, as much as they do in attracting new customers.
Philip Stevenson
Chartered financial planner
ARK Financial Planning
Stalybridge, Cheshire
