Like this slogan. It got my attention. Neat. The slogan, I mean. The offer is free business banking for two years. You get a "fee-free" £500 overdraft in the first year, and "no annual fee on your Business Credit Card for the first twelve months". Various other bits and pieces, including a cloud-based "free business planning tool" and online "free start-up courses". I put in all those inverted commas - exact quotes - because there's a paragraph of "Important information" in slightly smaller print. After two years, you go onto the Standard Tariff.
I don't have a problem with this. I called the Co-operative Bank eighteen months ago, and opened a business bank account that will go on being free after two years (there's print of various sizes, online and off; I got it because I'm a member of the Federation of Small Businesses, which is not free). Did some research first - two years of free business banking was pretty much standard at that point. Maybe it isn't now. Maybe this is special.
So anyway, the offer here is not to say 'No' to anybody who walks in with a business plan and asks to open a business bank account. The picture behind the slogan, if you can't see it, shows a bearded man whispering in the ear of a grinning woman. Curiously enough, this offer doesn’t come from the bank that once promoted itself as “The Bank That Likes To Say Yes”. This one’s from the “helpful banking” people.
Does this slogan over-promise? I don’t know. I picked up the leaflet because I thought – naively, perhaps – that these people were committing to say “Yes!” to something more than just opening a bank account. After all the fuss about banks lending to small businesses, I mean. This offer doesn’t quite seem to match up to the eye-catching slogan.
Maybe I should mention Innotribe, which pays US$50,000 to the winner of its annual Startup Challenge. Finalists get training in how to pitch their ideas to banks – to get financing, rather than just bank accounts. You have to be a “fintech” startup, but that’s a pretty wide definition.
I don't have a problem with this. I called the Co-operative Bank eighteen months ago, and opened a business bank account that will go on being free after two years (there's print of various sizes, online and off; I got it because I'm a member of the Federation of Small Businesses, which is not free). Did some research first - two years of free business banking was pretty much standard at that point. Maybe it isn't now. Maybe this is special.
So anyway, the offer here is not to say 'No' to anybody who walks in with a business plan and asks to open a business bank account. The picture behind the slogan, if you can't see it, shows a bearded man whispering in the ear of a grinning woman. Curiously enough, this offer doesn’t come from the bank that once promoted itself as “The Bank That Likes To Say Yes”. This one’s from the “helpful banking” people.
Does this slogan over-promise? I don’t know. I picked up the leaflet because I thought – naively, perhaps – that these people were committing to say “Yes!” to something more than just opening a bank account. After all the fuss about banks lending to small businesses, I mean. This offer doesn’t quite seem to match up to the eye-catching slogan.
Maybe I should mention Innotribe, which pays US$50,000 to the winner of its annual Startup Challenge. Finalists get training in how to pitch their ideas to banks – to get financing, rather than just bank accounts. You have to be a “fintech” startup, but that’s a pretty wide definition.