Many bank staff as confused as customers about cheques

Following a recent investigation it has been revealed that many bank staff members are as clueless as many consumers when it comes to the clearance times for cheques. The problem was brought to light in a recent investigation by the industry watchdog, the Banking Code Standards Board.

The results of the investigation are quite worrying given that consumers rely on bank employees to provide them with information about matters such as these, and if the bank staff aren’t able to provide the answer there is little hope for consumers.

The investigation found that employees of many banks were providing information that was ‘confusing and inconsistent’ to customers that were asking about cheque clearance times, and this was revealed after a mystery shopping exercise was carried out. Worse still, a similar survey was carried out a year earlier, but the results of this latest one were worse than the previous one, showing that not only has there been no improvement since the last time but things have actually gone downhill.

The industry standard is that after six days a cheque is classed as completely cleared, and therefore cannot bounce.

However, a massive two thirds of bank employees that were surveyed were not even aware of this, although more employees were aware of other regulations, such as interest being credited no later than two days after a cheque has been paid in, which around 42 percent of employees were aware of, and that the money must be available to be drawn out after no more than four days, which around 50 percent of employees were aware of.

However, despite the fact that half of bank employees were aware of the latter, the overall results was deemed as very disappointment by investigators, who described the results as ’significantly worse’ than those from the 2008 investigation.

The investigation involved ten UK banks and nine building societies, and over the course of the investigation one hundred and ten phone calls were made by investigators. In addition to this a total of one hundred and sixty four banks and building society branches were also visited as part of the survey.

Following the investigation Robert Skinner, chief executive of the board, said: “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.”

The investigation has clearly highlighted a need for further training within the banking industry, which has already been under fire over the last couple of years for a wide range of issues, ranging from the bank charges scandal and mis-selling of payment protection insurance cover to irresponsible lending that contributed to the downfall of the financial system.

Tags: consumers, banks, cheques, Numismatics, Banking, investigation, bank, customer facing staff