Both Stockholm and London had the same problem – too many
people driving into the city to work, clogging up the road network for a few
hours each day and tying up acres of space for car parks. They both wanted people to switch to commuting
by train, but how to achieve that?
In Sweden they improved the train service so that it was
quick, cheap and reliable. As a result nobody in Stockholm drives in unless
they really really need their car during the day. Almost everybody else takes the train.
In London they did not improve the shockingly unreliable and
expensive train service; they made driving in harder. Congestion Charging; Red
Routes; Clamping and armies of Traffic Wardens to catch those trying to avoid
the astronomically high car parking charges. And it didn’t work! People still pay the ridiculous charges to
travel into London in their car rather than squeezing onto an overcrowded train
that is unlikely to reach its destination anywhere near the specified time; if
it turns up at all.
I was reminded of this by the Bank of St Helena’s recent
announcement that it may no longer process account transfers on the day they
are presented.
Bank of St Helena has recently introduced features that could
bring St Helena banking into the 21st Century. You can now bank online, and a trial is
underway for a debit card scheme making cashless payment possible in shops and
restaurants. Which is fine, except that
both of these new services are expensive and will be out of the reach of
ordinary Saints trying to make ends meet with St Helena’s notoriously low wages
and high prices.
Unable to afford the new services, most Saints will continue
to queue up at the bank to draw out their salary in cash, and will continue to
use account transfers in shops when the cash runs out or the queue at the bank
is too long to contemplate.
The bank’s response to this sadly follows London’s, not
Stockholm’s. They have not made Internet
and debit card usage cheaper, they have introduced new ‘rules’ to make using
account transfers harder. Firstly they
will no longer promise to process them on the day they are presented, leading
to confusion about when the funds will be debited from the account. And secondly they have said that in some cases
they will not issue a receipt for the transaction until the next day or later,
and that they will expect the customer to come back to the bank to collect
their receipt! I’ve used banks the world
over since 1976 and I have never heard of one where you had to go back the
following day for your receipt!
Will this work? Will
this force ordinary Saints to use Internet banking and debit cards? I predict it will not. If people have so little money they are forced
to compare prices in up to half a dozen shops to save 20p on a tin of beans,
they do not have the option to pay for 21st Century banking at the
prices Bank of St Helena is charging. So
they will have to continue using cash and account transfers, however inconvenient
the bank makes it.
The net effect of this new measure, I am sure, will not be
more Internet banking and debit card customers – it will just be a lot more
unhappy people! And they can’t move
their business to another bank because - as is so often the case in St Helena –
there isn’t one.
I was the managing director of Bank of St Helena from 2005 to
2008. I can honestly say that such a
thing would never have happened in my day!
