It's meant to be the bank that's on your side - so why is TSB losing customers and being taken over by a giant Spanish rival?
-
Loading... - CRISTIAN CASTILLO
- 30 Apr 2020
- 623 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
The voice of the only customer standing in the TSB branch at Church Street in Enfield, North London, rings out through the dingy room.
The carpet has a tired, insipid blue pattern, the walls are grey, and giant red lampshades - matching nothing else in the room - hang over two empty desks.
It's lucky the customer isn't discussing anything sensitive because you can hear every word from the far end of the room. When she leaves, it is utterly silent. Two cashiers carry on their work behind glass screens.
For five minutes no one comes in. I leave the branch and turn left and walk past the post office and a few mobile phone shops. I cross the road and there is another bank.
When you walk through the doors, staff in pale blue shirts ask: 'What are you here to do today?'
Behind them are cashier's desks with staff sitting on wooden stools at a high pine counter. The floors and walls are white, and there are desks with iPads and computers. On the left is a 5 ft wide touch screen for customers to use.
This is also a branch of TSB - just 180 paces from the other one. It doesn't just look like a different bank, it feels like another era, or perhaps a mobile phone or Apple store.
This branch is the future of TSB; the one down the street is its past.
Today, Money Mail can reveal that TSB plans to shut the older branch and 16 others like it.
As part of its latest results, the bank - which was formed in 2012 by a European ruling that forced giant Lloyds Banking Group to sell off some of its branches - will report to the stock exchange today a new plan to become one of the big players on the High Street.
Part of that means axing unwanted branches, but also a radical overhaul of the way it sells products, which will attempt to put customers first.
BEST CURRENT ACCOUNTS
Chosen by This is Money
| PROVIDER | INCENTIVE |
| M&S Bank | £100 voucher |  |
| The Co-op | Cashback | |
| Nationwide | Travel cover | |
| Santander | 3% cashback | |
| Halifax | £5 a month | |
All sales data will be banned from branches. No staff member, branch manager or regional boss will get to see what is being sold.
And there are no sales targets or commission for local staff. The idea is that if staff don't feel under pressure to meet targets then they will concentrate more on giving customers what they want.
It's a bold plan, but TSB's ambitions may come as a shock to some.
It is Britain's forgotten bank - not part of the Big Five club of Barclays, RBS, Lloyds, HSBC and Santander, and not an alternative, such as Nationwide Building Society or the Co-op.
And it comes as investors and customers will get an update on a proposed take-over bid by Spanish bank Sabadell.
