Today I went with my new business partners to the bank, NatWest to be precise, to open a business account. I cannot tell you how many pieces of paper the bank official generated but, put it this way, you'd need a heavy-duty stapler to fix them all together. Such a last-century system I have not seen in a long time.
I nearly started giggling at Mr NatWest's opening introduction. Handing us a piece of paper he quickly ran through it starting with "we're regulated by the FSA" and culminating, if we had a complaint "you can complain to the FSA". What a joke!
The second time I nearly let everyone down (remember I'm the senior citizen here and the other two are thirty-something young men) was when Mr NatWest asked us what relationship we had with one another. I so much wanted to point to my colleagues and say "well this one is my lover and the other one is my father". I didn't as I didn't think that Mr NatWest with his finely pressed white shirt, pristine tie and wonderfully buffed black patent shoes would have been able to cope adequately with such a response.
What I deduced by the end of the experience was that the process has changed not one jot since 1996 when I last opened a business account with NatWest, so it's hardly surprising that banking is in the mess it is!
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