Yorkshire Banks

Attending the Yorkshire Mafia Conference in Leeds today was an inspiration. There was a real energy around the event and this combined with some good news for businesses in the Budget led to a general feeling of positivity.

I was part of the Billion Pound Panel. This included a number of key local business leaders: Paul Caplan the owner of Go Outdoors; James Lambert, CEO and Executive Chairman of R&R Ice Cream; Lawrence Tomlinson, Founding Chairman of the LNT Group and Colin Graves, Chairman of Costcutter Supermarkets. According to the Yorkshire Mafia we have combined revenues of more than £1bn. 

We were there to take questions from the audience about their interests and concerns. These ranged from the use of social media to rates of taxation to environmental initiatives. Inevitably the discussion also turned to funding for business and one of the panel had expressed his disbelief at how the banks are currently behaving.

Chairman of the session, the very talented and entertaining Gary Verity, CEO of Welcome to Yorkshire, asked the audience how many of them were happy with the service they received from their bank. Just three people put up their hand. 

I counted over 200 people in the audience. All stakeholders in the local economy and many running local SMEs. 98.5% of them not happy with the service they receive from their bank. 

I would imagine that any other industry with such dire customer satisfaction would be devastated at such a result. Is it possible that banks don't know that there is such a level of dissatisfaction? Are customers too scared to express their real feelings? 

Or is it that they know full well and frankly they are not too bothered about the situation because there is limited competition and for every customer they lose they probably gain another one?

I was shocked by the almost universal extent of this problem but I was not surprised. I could not help thinking that this potentially creates an incredible opportunity for someone to come in and change the game. It can't happen soon enough.