BIG BANKS NEED BIG BUCKS May 16th 2000 I like technology and always have; from the first time I programmed up my Bigtrak electronic toy tank to the present day, sitting in front of this very laptop. I remember with fondness my first experiences of the Internet at school, first through British Telecom chat rooms such as #bliss and #jolly and later using the Mosaic browser. But I despise the fact that technology has recently become an excuse to promote blatant heartless capitalism at the public's expense. The worst offender in Britain at the moment must be Barclays Bank with its ill- advised and insulting "A Big World Needs a Big Bank" campaign. In the centrepiece advert, Anthony Hopkins takes a limo around Hollywood, talking about "big deals" and "big bucks" and looking, quite frankly, like a big twat. "Who'd want to be a little deal clincher?", he asks, oblivious to the fact that a majority of his fellow countrymen and indeed most of planet Earth are struggling to be mere "little deal clinchers". Did Hopkins get to read the script in advance?? Rarely has a company been quite so candid about its Machievellian intentions. The latest commercials, filmed at a cost of millions, are the advertising equivalent of a Freudian slip. "About my fee..." says Sir Anthony, "....I'd like it to be...what's the word?...big". Very nice, Mr. Hopkins. That would explain the £2.50 surcharge on our cash machine withdrawals, then. Perhaps he ought to talk to staff from the 172 branches that Barclays Bank closed last month and tell them exactly what big bucks mean. Because being big means cutting corners and reducing costs. It means downsizing humans, employing machines to lower overheads and charging customers extra for the pleasure. Being big means lending customers' money to third world governments at interest rates so high that the nations can never hope to pay it back. Barclays' profits increased by 30% in 1999. It has saved £1 billion through the recent closures this year and hopes to shave off another £1 billion in the next three. Yet do Barclays pass these savings on to the customer or re-invest in a better service? Unlikely. Instead, they blow it all on a big advertising budget, complete with movie stars, helicopter shots and a fifty foot poodle. Just in case we had forgotten how big they really are. Meanwhile, Chairman Sir Peter Middleton earned a salary of £1.76m and CEO Matthew Barrett received £1.35 million for just three months' work. Big money. But there's got to be something wrong with a society that pays executives more and more while their service gets thinner and thinner. In a normal article, this is where the man from Barclays would intervene, gently pointing out that we have dug our own graves by so readily accepting technologies such as cash machines, telephone banking and cashback services. Hold on, though, because if the big banks have their way we will soon all be managing our own bank accounts over the Internet and they'll still be finding ways to charge us. What a clever business proposition: we pay the banks while they make us do the work. If the banks want to prove they care about us as much as they care about big profits, there is one area of service that could easily be improved upon; namely the speed with which deposits are processed. Why in 21st century Britain do we still have to wait three days or more for a cheque to clear? (BTW, this is a rhetorical question). In America they've mastered this one: most US banks allow customers to draw on a cheque the moment it is paid in. Despite Mr. Hopkins' eulogising about the importance of magnitude, the best thing about Internet technology should be that it can bring us closer, knitting together small communities rather than dividing them. Napster, current scourge of the music industry, is just the electronic version of swapping tapes with a friend, one on one (or 'peer to peer'). What counts on the Internet is individual word of mouth , which Malcolm Gladwell refers to in "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference". Even financial experts are beginning to agree that the future of Internet money clearing depends on micropayments, very small financial transactions amounting to only pennies at a time. So, at the end of the day, what gave Barclays get the idea that bigger is better? Size *and I would say this* isn't everything. Sorry, Anthony, some things in life are better little. Little bank charges, little interest rates, little prices, little queues... and little banks in little villages. Power to the small fry! comment on this article e-mail this to a friend start a discussion [about i-drive] writing index thoughts index dotmusic index musicbank index Problems? Questions? Suggestions? Contact me: mail@tobyslater.com back to top back to home page

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