Lloyds

You'll probably have seen that Lloyds bank are in the news having been fined a record £28m over an 'incentive scheme' in which staff had to hit targets or risk being demoted. For me the whole thing felt like deja vu all over again.

Back in the eighties when I was in my <whisper>mid-twenties</whisper> a younger friend of mine mentioned to me that she had an appointment to see her bank.

"Oh," I said, "why's that?"

"They phoned me up and said I should come and see them." she replied.

I was a nosey bugger even then so I asked some more questions and two things became clear: first that she really didn't understand why she was being asked to take time off work to come into her branch to see them but they were her bank, they were authority figures to her, so she did as she was told; and second that the actual reason was that they wanted to see of they could sell her some of their products.

I explained, and also about IFAs, and she cancelled her appointment and that was the end of it.

But it left a very bad taste in my mouth and as a result I've never put any of my business their way. So this recent news comes as no surprise: it looks like nothing much has changed at Lloyds in the past couple of decades.