Bank employees confused about cheque clearance

Many consumers in the UK are confused over the issue of how long it takes for a cheque to clear, and a recent survey has shown that this comes as no surprise given that employees of banks themselves are also confused about cheque clearance times.

A mystery shopping exercise that was recently carried out revealed that a worrying number of employees that worked for banks did not actually know how long it took for a cheque to clear, and as a result were given out inaccurate information to customers.

The exercise was carried out by the Banking Code Standards Board, and officials from the board said that in many cases banking employees appeared to be confidence when providing customers with information whilst at the same time they were actually giving out inaccurate and incorrect information.

A similar survey was carried out a year ago, but officials from the board said that the results of this latest survey were actually worse than the results for the previous one.

It takes six days for a cheque to properly clear, but consumers have been given all sorts of different time periods by banking employees who are themselves unsure as to what the actual clearance period is.

This has led industry experts to conclude that training given to staff members has been inadequate or ineffective. Two thirds of the banking staff that were assessed as part of the operation were unable to give the customer accurate information with regards to cheque clearance times.

The Chief Executive of the board stated: “It is clearly disappointing that, despite the concerns raised in our last report, we have found customer facing staff, in the majority of cases, unable to provide clear and accurate information to customers on the cheque clearing cycle. Our review did not indicate that large numbers of customers are being financially disadvantaged as a result but the industry clearly has work to do in improving the knowledge of front line staff.”

Tags: cheques clear, clearance times, staff members, cheques, cheque clearance times, Many consumers