Team SBCB
After meeting with Dr Lawrence Tomlinson and other RBS complainants in 2013, the idea of the SBCB was born and a specialist team has been put together which is receiving, collating, investigating and analysing banking complaints, looking for patterns of behaviour and complaint traits.
During the course of the investigation each complainant has access to SBCB on the telephone or in person and can talk to a SBCB partner lawyer.
Investigated complaints that are found to have substance (nearly all of them) are ‘packaged’ and forwarded to SBCB civil and criminal prosecution partners and litigation funders for further action (not necessarily court action!)
Group actions and complaints to the banks direct and through a solicitor, can be far more powerful and cost effective than an individual complaint. For example our partner Berg Solicitors already has over 150 complainants, where the majority have been placed into GRG and have had a suspect valuation of their business assets.
SBCB is there along the way to help complainants, assisting with gathering their evidence and helping them to understand the process they are going through, in what could be described as a hand holding exercise.
We are also very pleased to be providing helpful information, press releases, discussion forums and even 3rd party stress and debt counselling assistance.
Don’t forget – The SBCB Directors have been there too!
Walton turned detective after being told by RBS that the amount he owed on his personal loan was much greater than he thought. He asked for a copy of his original loan agreement, but when he received it he knew at once that it wasn’t the genuine article. He eventually found his original carbon copy, which confirmed his suspicions.
Recreating documents is not against the law; banks are allowed to supply replacements if the original paperwork has gone missing, provided they are “correct in all particulars”. But some might say that when bank staff are “under pressure,” to quote from that memo, mistakes creep in. In Walton’s case, it was a string of errors.
His MP, John Healey, the local government minister, said in a letter written to RBS last summer that he was “very concerned” about the bank’s conduct, adding: “It may be the case that the bank’s actions are not just unfair, but illegal.” But the bank strongly refutes any suggestion of wrongdoing.
Under current legislation, banks must, if requested by a customer, provide them with a “true copy” of their credit agreement within a certain period, otherwise the bank may have difficulty enforcing it. But the Office of Fair Trading says a bank “may supply a ‘reconstruction’, only in the sense that it is providing exactly the same information as appeared on the original agreement”. Clearly that didn’t happen.
In a letter sent to the bank in November, Walton’s MP said he remained concerned, adding: “Is it RBS’s normal business practice to create and change accounts … without informing a customer or seeking their agreement?”
The second “true copy” the bank prepared was correct, says the spokesman. [Guardian Money has seen a copy and it is almost, but not completely, identical to Walton’s own copy]. “Once the CCJ was enforced, that became his credit agreement with us, and so we were no longer legally obliged to provide a ‘true copy’ of the original agreement,” he adds.
As to the memo, the bank says: “We strongly refute any suggestion of wrongdoing – we are fully compliant with both the regulation and legislation.”
Lloyds bank manager closed my property portfolio down 5 days after i called her a bully because of all the bullying and harasement they put on my property business .the apointed a lpa frombristol when i lived in newcastle upon tyne ,who sold the portfolio in fire sales .i was not in arreas or default when they pulled my commercial loan for 1.3 million .they had valued the portfolio up 6 months prior at 1.78 million and a local ricks valuer had valued it up at 2 million .how is this just and honest .this is wrong ,they then instructed a debt collecting agent to chase me for 205k because the fire sale of the property had sold for 1.1 million .the property was sold via actions and all ways .this is totaly wrong .the debt collectors where instructed with out even a court case .
