Financial Terror
I’ll give you this right from the start, Osama bin Northern Rock is a ridiculous title for any article. But on the way in to work this morning I was thinking a lot about Northern Rock (LON:NRK) after I swerved to miss a rabbit that sat by the side of the road until I was right on top of it. What triggered the thought was if Northern Rock was driving this car right now, would they have not swerved and hit the rabbit because swerving might erode their profits?
What started to make me curious was if there was any similarity between the poor corporate citizenship of the Northern Rock collection department by refusing to treat consumers fairly, and terrorism. I’ll have to admit, the thought of the title did make me laugh.
Apparently the FBI in the U.S. defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” Ironically that does not seem to far off the mark when it comes to the failure of Northern Rock to fully live up to their promises under the British Banking Code, just substitute political or social with financial and I think you’ve got it.
While Northern Rock isn’t marching consumers at the end of a real gun to bankruptcy court, they are using financial terrorism by refusing to individually review and consider Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) proposals fairly and reasonably. This process marches good people to bankruptcy for no good reason.
The position taken by Northern Rock, HSBC, MBNA and others to purposefully reject and rebuff people’s fair offers of repayment when living through financial troubles seems to be one of intentional intimidation and coercion to force the furtherance of Northern Rock’s thirst for profits.
I call it intimidation because by refusing to consider or properly review the IVA offers put forth by Insolvency Practitioners, Northern Rock and others are taking advantage of people. You see, the word on the street is that the banks haven’t seen this IVA refusal policy result in a “serious uptick” in bankruptcy rates so they feel they have successfully blocked the consumer from taking binding action and thrown the poor sod back into the dung heap of limping along and giving them monthly payments.
What is disturbing in this bloody mess is the complete disregard for the code that banks actually stand behind and pledge to live by, the Banking Code. I’ve given up complaining about the British Banking Association because as far as I can see by their attention to this serious issue, they aren’t much better than a worthless old club that meets so they can hear themselves talk and choose between a lunch of chicken or fish.
A couple of birds have whispered in my ear that the banks are disregarding treating consumers in accordance with the Banking Code because they are placing their internal accounting instructions ahead of their promise to honor the Banking Code.
Frankly I would not be surprised if this was the case at all. Many banks seem to feel they are above the law, can do what they want and consumers are just the noise they have to deal with to get what they really want, profits.
If you would like to do something about this and stand up and ask the banks to live up to their promise of treating people fairly, sign the damn online petition, please.
I don't want those lovely lads at the Insolvency Exchange to think I've forgotten about them and their TIX Compliant IVA BS. Every time I publish something with their name in it they come like flies to look at it on the website. I can see you. So just to make you guys dance, TIX, TIX, TIX, TIX, TIX, and TIX.
