One bank is bad at maintaining their app all the way to a blanket statement about rich people and technology.
I am not a rich person, although I'm comfortable, but several of my banks are terrible at IT. Like "We are upgrading our web site so it won't be available until Tuesday" level bad at IT.
Note that wasn't just "Some services won't be available", the whole web site was out of action for most of a day. It's disappointing but understandable if I can't send a random stranger 2500 ¥ at 2am because the bank are upgrading something. But it's straight up crazy that I can't even see my 2018 bank statement PDF because they're upgrading, it's the sort of feature a PHP Blog site can make work.
Not necessarily more hours or $$ spent on it, but more care.
I envy this sometimes. It takes a lot more work to evolve a system with zero downtime.
Maybe every other bank is better? I doubt it. For me one bank being unavailable is a mild inconvenience (it so happened I wanted to use Santander to check some records, but most days I wouldn't have noticed) but most people only have one bank, so it being out of action is really problematic, and we live in an era when "you could visit a physical branch" might as well be "You could fly to the moon" for all the practical good it does normal customers.
The IT Crowd TV series are representative.
Guessing their clients aren’t banking via mobile apps, their staff having lines to their banker. Most top-tier private banks barely have an online presence. If you want something, you (or your assistant) calls or texts your banker.
Edit: 5 downvotes, tough crowd
What do you mean by that? In a way it's not retro enough (for me?), I currently have an account that can only be accessed via a mobile app (e.g. no website). See for instance https://www.neon-free.ch/en/
You can open an account fully online from your home, I don't think you even have to mail anything.
Opening an account with Neon is the simplest thing ever.
I'm still on the phone weekly with CS to even attempt to make them do anything I've ordered them to.
Three weeks ago, they sent me a letter to confirm that my email address was authorized to make orders. I sent that back with the enclosed envelope. 4 days later, they called me to confirm my order. I did (verbally). They called back 10min later to confirm again. I confirmed again.
It has been two weeks since that phone call and the transfer has still not been completed.
Neo banks are more modern and convenient but only compared to traditional banks within CH: spotty online bills support, no twint (or prepay twint), money transfers only occur once a day at 10am on banking days, customer service open from 9 to 5… Banks in CH are hilariously bad (and expensive), and it’s a shock because you always have this image that Switzerland banks must be amazing. Nope, far from it.
For the rest I guess it's things I don't personally care about, so while it could be better (I have a EUR account for which my recipients get transfers within hours), I don't really notice it in practice.
Look, I'm a data engineer by day, I understand how bad UIs happen. I use Airflow, for God's sake, and heavily customized Airflow at that (where we've honestly only kind of roughly kept pace with the UI quality. like I said, I get how bad UIs happen).
But seriously. I try to be charitable. I can understand how page flows might be janky, how you might need a few redirects as they pass you through decades of legacy systems, etc.
But by God, there are some pages where I seriously cannot figure how they made that specific page, alone, in isolation so bad. The only thing I can come up with is they either a) contracted it out to someone who is literally not as capable as someone 2 years into a CS degree, or they've split the page among multiple teams who all wrote little scraps of HTML and JS and then some poor soul had to weld them all together and that's how it ended up.
Is it really just that they all hire huge incompetent contractors who "nobody ever got fired for hiring etc etc" and then they invariably fuck it up? I don't get how that doesn't get disrupted by either SaaS or just someone making a contracting shop that actually finishes projects correctly.
Oh sweet summer child. You have not known the sharp pain of regulatory constraints, split stakeholder constraints, legacy enterprise constraints, COVID constraints. You know not of capacity planning, SOC2, or international banking law.
You have not known the one million lines of code repositories (PLURAL).
You do not see behind the summer rain. To the endless blizzard of business logic behind the frontend. To the third party vendors, evil so vast if it were written down the generations beyond could never forgive.
I envy you greatly.
I've exclusively worked in highly regulated industries - first a registered broker dealer where one of my (less favored) hats I wore was working directly with the SEC and FINRA handling inquiries, and the second being a large fintech company I don't want to be too specific about that dealt with a lot of banking and money movement regulations.
I'd appreciate it if you'd point your condescending prose elsewhere. I stand by my point. There's no reason some of the banking sites I've had to use should be so bad given their funding. If an ungraduated CS student can make their website not break chrome's credit card autocompletion, why can't enormous banks?
Wonder why a transaction was denied? Shoot an email with a screenshot. Want 500$ of Moroccan Dirhams for your next trip? Shoot a text and they'll put together a package + a few sweets for you to pick up when you stop by.
If they wanted an app-based fintech they could have instantly opened an account with the many available companies in the field, and maybe they also have, but obviously that is not what Coutts is about.
Not particularly exclusive, bought by NatWest in 2000 and then taken over by Ernst & Cie. So its little more than a brand-name these days, you can effectively buy your way in.
If you want truly exclusive, you have to cross the road and walk a bit further down the Strand to Fleet Street.
Regarding Private Banks and the online world, yes they tend to be a bit further behind the bleeding edge. But then if one can call up one's relationship manager who recognises one by voice without the need for tiresome security questions, then one might understand why expenditure on one's bank's online services is a secondary priority.
So if you can’t “buy your way in” to these banks, what are the criteria?
First you will need to be "introduced" to the bank by an existing customer. We're not talking about a referral link here, we're saying who introduces you is just as important as who is being introduced (i.e. long-standing customer vouching for an introduction gets more weight than a newbie trying to get a mate in).
Second, if the introduction is acceptable, then you will be invited to a meeting with one or more members of the bank's senior management to determine if you are a good fit (and no, "good fit" does not equal a commercial fit about determining how much they can sell you, its a "good fit" as in determining that you have your head screwed on and won't cause the bank problems).
You might think this is excessive, but at the most exclusive bank the management have genuine skin in the game (e.g. bank is purposely setup as unlimited liability legal structure, so if management were to ever fuck up, they really would FUCK UP because they have no corporate veil to hide behind).
It also means that dodgy overseas money and the nouveau riche can't buy their way in and start causing problems. A truly exclusive bank values quality of client over quantity of clients.
C. Hoare & Co. [1]
Their unlimited liability and the reasoning behind it is briefly discussed in a blog post by one of their senior partners[2].
[1] https://www.hoaresbank.co.uk/ [2] https://www.hoaresbank.co.uk/The_Special_Dynamics_of_a_Famil...
> 'Mr Babbington,' he said, suddenly stopping in his up and down. 'Take your hands out of your pockets. When did you last write home?' Mr Babbington was at an age when almost any question evokes a guilty response, and this was, in fact, a valid accusation. He reddened, and said, 'I don't know, sir.' 'Think, sir, think,' said Jack, his good-tempered face clouding unexpectedly...'Never mind. Write a handsome letter. Two pages at least. And send it in to me with your daily workings tomorrow. Give your father my compliments and tell him my bankers are Hoares.' For Jack, like most other captains, managed the youngsters' parental allowance for them. 'Hoares,' he repeated absently once or twice, 'my bankers are Hoares,' and a strangled ugly crowing noise made him turn. Young Ricketts was clinging to the fall of the main burton-tackle in an attempt to control himself, but without much success.
One take I've heard on that, whether or not its true I don't know, is that it is a tongue-in-cheek reference to one of the very early generation of Hoares, one of whom earnt himself the nickname "naughty" (Richard "Naughty" Hoare).
Allegedly he was no stranger to, shall we say, a particularly extravagant lifestyle.
Why would they want to do that?
To show the customer they're putting their money where their mouth is, i.e. that they are genuinely more interested in the long-term relationship than the pure commercial profitability of the client.
Going for unlimited liability also focuses the mind of the bank's management. You can't make short-sighted decisions just because you want to boost your bonus. You have to genuinely make sound decisions with the bank and the bank's customer's in mind.
Its very rare these days. Rarer than pure partnership legal structure which is already very rare. Almost all organisations these days opt to take the easier route and hide behind the corporate veil.
Not sure why downvoted. Many private banks have $1 to 10mm minimums.
OP’s point still stands. That’s middle of ground for a private bank. Far from “most exclusive.”
For instance, if the Royal family banks there it means they think the bank will never ever make headlines for the wrong reasons or at all.
Anyone will take your cash if there’s enough of it.
It was just a lot more personal service than any large bank could ever offer.
I imagine this is exactly the same, just on a bigger scale.
My brother did the same thing when he started his businesses, and I've moved to it over time. It's hard to beat talking to a banker who understands what you're doing and is actually there to help you.
Think William Reece-Mogg, not Dick van Dyke.
FYI not sure about other countries, but Americans don't know who the fuck that is.
Even more ironic is that My Fair Lady is an American film based on a play by an Irish Brit (George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion).
Perhaps there truly is no such thing as proper English.
No clue about Coutt’s. But for a top-tier private bank, you have someone you can contact 24/7 (if not them personally, someone you know on their team) to help you. You can effortlessly escalate to the bank’s senior leadership when problems arise.
As a result, having cash overnighted in the event of a lost wallet, cabs paid for over the phone on the firm’s account, or international wires processed instantly and without fees happen. (Also, Formula 1 tickets and access to the firm’s Parterre box at the Met, as well as, for the up and coming, introductions to the bank’s other clients.)
Service= a dedicated banker with whom you can call directly with issues/problems
Flexibility= Custom solutions / humans in the loop decisions. E.g. I know someone who was able to procure a 90 day bridge loan implying dizzying leverage as he was buying a business and buying + selling a primary residence because he was able to sit down with someone, walk through the merits with a human underwriter.
Advice= Conduit of multitudes of expert opinions around insurance, tax, estate planning etc.
/s
Maybe it's more than just one tiny group of people who are prone to such things as hypocrisy.
The royal family gets some of it in their personal coffers, and it's a nontrivial sum, but it wouldn't fix the UK's financial problems all in one swoop to take it. And it would come at a cost of a significant amount of prestige and tourism dollars. It might be a net gain, but most people in the UK feel that it wouldn't be worth the cost to their nation identity.
Many in the UK want the opposite of nationalization. They want to sell off major government properties to private owners, and let capitalism do the work. This isn't quite a majority opinion but it has strong support (and bitter opposition).
I think it’s not just the literal king, but also all the other remaining royalty.
Perhaps privatization is a better path than nationalization. It just seems quite unjust to have literal hereditary land that cannot be transferred.
Just seems like a flamewar comment that doesn't actually explain itself. If the whole rich vs. poor thing resonates with me on some deep ideological level, I can go ahead and pretend I understand what this all means. Maybe I can even respond with a supportive comment about something something Reagan Republicans.
Also, rich people are much more familiar with ongoing asset maintenance costs than the average person, having more assets to maintain.
Coutts probably doesn’t interact with its clients primarily through the app. I bet it’s mostly direct calls/texts between bankers and clients.
I remember the “we only need to support Internet Explorer” days. Testing on Chrome and Firefox wasn’t important.
They are not paying assistants and accountants so they can do mundane tasks like login to a banking site and pay a bill.
Edit: thst -> this. Mobile autocorrects the wrong "correction"
and no one said they have 'exclusive accountants'. There are accounting services where you pay them for a few days work and they take care of all your bills for you.
I've only met one multi-billionaire in my life and can assure you that he has never seen his bills, let alone pay them.
He doesnt even own a smart phone, because he has assistants who handle most of that for him allowing him to focus on one thing - making money.
Please keep in mind I’m not talking about living in poverty, I’m talking about having all your monetary needs met to live your lifestyle (without being forced to work), without having a huge excess left over.
Out of curiosity (not debating, but rather conversating) -- what portion of humanity is in this enviable condition?
It's probably somewhere <5%, maybe <1%, right now (I would include current successful retirees).
Their quality and approaches are highly varied, but the one billionaire you know probably uses one, as the "never pay bills and no smart phone" is fairly indicative of a family office behind the scenes.
But all the rich people I know are in tech or banking/investing, and made, not inherited, their money.
As an aside, my guess is that average tax rate for the techies is 40% but probably <30% for the bankers.
>>>This is one of the most exclusive banks in the world ... and they can't even be bothered to keep their mobile app up to date.
My bank (First Republic) caters to richer people, and has had shitty website features in the past. It’s all outsourced to Intuit, I think. But overall it’s a great bank. I care a lot about technology but don’t make all life decisions based on it. One I did make is refuse to buy a car in 2017 (Mini Cooper) that didn’t have CarPlay (I bought a GTI instead).
People love to be marketed to and sold the promises of amazing technology that can do extraordinary things, but nobody wants to pay for it. And if you're a company that wants a mobile app as part of your business, then you need to understand that you gotta pay to maintain it. There's no excuse for a bank like this to skip out on app maintenance. If the wealthiest among us can't understand this, what does it say about our decision to transition towards a more technology-reliant society?
In the face of Apple's app store bullshit, I completely understand. Apple regularly shit the bed in getting apps updated. Frankly the wheels have come off their 'premium' branding a while back.