Recipe for Disaster

Take three perfectly good financial products,

• One non status mortgage requiring no proof of income, a cautious valuation and client equity stake of 35%
• One 100% mortgage requiring no client equity stake, a cautious valuation but belt and braces proof of taxable income and affordability
• One 80% mortgage, a cautious valuation, belt and braces proof of taxable income and affordabilty offering discounted interest payments for the first two years

Add a large helping of political gain with nauseating proportions of deregulated bankster spin and mix well.

Throwing caution to the wind, allow evidence of income, equity and conservative valuations to float to the top, carefully remove and discard.

Using what is left, re-package as an innovative low risk mortgage product which will take the market by storm

Present finished article to the board in terms of anticipated personal returns and obtain consent to market.

Use highly incentivised bank staff to roll out new product to as many brokers and introducers as possible, turn a blind eye to their methods and pay all concerned on results

Insist all new applications are submitted online by the broker with declaration pages to follow after offer

Provide regulated mortgages of up to a 125% LTV having told brokers that applicants homes will not be valued conservatively and applicants incomes will not be verified.

Have your cake and eat it while watching with detached indifference for the cookies to crumble,

Leave the victims of widespread mortgage fraud to cook in their own juice,

And then, just like HBOS have done with my own case,

Wash hands thoroughly.

The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth

John F Kennedy once said, “The enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic” and, after five ineffectual years of mythical post crisis reform and regulation of the UK’s banking sector, the truth has not only failed to set me free but it has also failed to spark the Financial Ombudsman Service’s interest or ruffled a single untouchable HBOS  or Lloyds Banking Group feather.

In a last ditch attempt to persuade the dismissive and the disinterested of my sincerity, I have, over the past two weeks, implemented the following;

• Prepared, sworn under oath and sent a statutory declaration to the FOS reiterating my claim that the mortgage application my broker submitted on line in 2006 contained false information which I did not supply.
• Sent HBOS’ customer services department my eight page letter of complaint because, contrary to my expectations, the FOS declined to ask HBOS to comment on its contents as part of the complaints process
• Simultaneously written to Lloyds Banking Group customer services, Lloyds Group Chief Executive Officer Antonia Horta Osario and Lloyds Group Chief Risk Officer Executive Juan Colombas, stating,

“Following the final decision from the FOS on 10 February 2014 it is now my opinion that the contract entered into in 2006 with the Bank of Scotland by myself and my husband is null and void. This is because it did not conform to due process and it was granted on false information which was supplied fraudulently by [a broker] and then negligently verified by HBOS’s underwriters M**** ******, S** ****** and J** ******.

As a result of the Ombudsman’s findings, together with information gleaned from a Data Subject Access Request, I am now of the opinion that I need to make a new complaint.

Yours faithfully”

Life After Debt

And,

• In an effort to understand the consequences a regulated  lender might suffer if they were found not to have complied with FCA rules, spoken at length with the FCA consumer helpline about my case.

As a result of my endeavours I have been advised;

• The FOS have received my “letter” and attached it to my file. There is no mention of them changing their plans to publish the ombudsman’s ruling on my case on their website
• HBOS’ Customer Services are unprepared to discuss my case any further and can only refer me back to the FOS’s recent ruling
• HBOS’ Executive team are in receipt of my letter of complaint, it is very important to them and they will be responding to it shortly 

And the Financial Conduct Authority informs me;

• The FOS are not empowered to rule or comment on cases of fraud
• HBOS are duty bound by FCA rules to prove beyond reasonable doubt they took adequate measures during the underwriting of my mortgage to verify the information contained in my application was true
• FCA rules run parallel to the law but, as guidelines, are not legally binding. Lenders are not required to keep compliance documentation for more than a year and the FCA, having asked for full details of the alleged perpetrators, strongly recommend I report my findings to Action Fraud or the police.

Thankfully, the tireless support, diligence and expertise of my FB friends has now put the latter very much in hand. 

Nineteenth century German born philosopher and author Arthur Schopenhauer believed, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed and third, it is accepted as being self-evident”. All I can now hope for is that, after six excruciating years of ridicule and violent opposition, the truth may finally become self evident in the hands of the Serious Fraud Office.

After all, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi;

 “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” 

Lest We Forget

Canadian born writer and theologian William Paul Young once said, “Forgiving is not about forgetting but it is about letting go of another persons’ throat” and having spent the past five years within the strangle hold of our creditors, I am thankful the vast majority of them have chosen to forgive.  However, I have returned home from a very welcome break with my family to be greeted by some correspondence which clearly  illustrates letting go of our throats is the last thing the Halifax Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group have in mind.

It has been six months since the Financial Ombudsman Service both ruled in my favour and awarded compensation for the distress and inconvenience that Lloyds Banking Group’s miss-handling of my husband’s credit card debt caused. Since then Lloyds have not only sold the debt twice but ignored both the income and expenditure form I completed as well the offer of settlement I made.  I am now faced with compiling yet another Financial Ombudsman Service Complaint at further cost to both myself and the tax payer.

I had hoped, as a result of my four letters to the HBOS Data Subject Access team, I would be returning to the missing documents pertaining to my miss sold mortgage.  Instead, I have received a letter which the reveals  the following:

       HBOS’s internal credit check document does not list the extent of the borrowing which was outstanding at the time of my mortgage application

       HBOS do not hold any accountants evidence to support my mortgage application

       HBOS do not hold a financial fact find of our circumstances in support our mortgage application

       HBOS continue to be unsuccessful in their endeavours to obtain information from their in house solicitor or surveyor

       HBOS are unprepared to disclose the reasons why my broker was removed from their panel during the underwriting of my mortgage

       HBOS are unprepared to send me their compliance check list on grounds it is not my personal information

This was my response;

Dear HBOS Data Subject Access Team,

Ref: *******

Thank for your letter dated 23 July 2013 and the further copies of information I requested along with your comments.

However, I have some further requests.

1.     Please may I ask you to confirm the credit reference summary is an external credit check document carried out to establish the level of financial commitment a customer already has at the time of application and not just an in house list of HBOS borrowings based on internal information and details supplied by the broker. If it is not, please supply me with copies of the external credit check carried out at the time of underwriting my mortgage.

2.     Please may I ask you to supply me with copies of the letters the DSAR team have sent to both Colleys Surveyors and Pathway Residential Lawyers requesting complete copies of my files.

3.     I would like to draw your attention to the Liberty Guide to the Human Rights Act 1998 in which it states, ““if information about you is held by your doctor, by your bank, by a credit reference agency, by your employer or by the tax-man, the likelihood is that it will be [available to you under the rules of a Data Subject Access Request because it is deemed to be] your personal data”. [This extends to] “personal data where it is processed to learn or record something about that individual or where the processing of that information has impact on that individual”. In the light that removing my broker from your panel may have had an adverse effect on the underwriting of my mortgage and your internal compliance checklist may well prove inadequate checks at the underwriting stage of my mortgage application have impacted on me personally, I would like to, once again, request that you supply me with the following;

•        Documentation which explains to the reasons my broker was removed from your panel.
•        The name of the department or the person responsible for overseeing my mortgage in the light that my broker was no longer at liberty to oversee it.
•       The internal regulatory checklist which complies with the FSA rules for the responsible underwriting of residential re-mortgages.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Yours sincerely

LAD

Soon after I sent this letter I was asked the following two questions by an Associated Press journalist. In the light of my ongoing battle and my recently received communications from both the Lloyds Banking Group and Halifax Bank of Scotland, I stand by the following answers.

Q. Do I feel the banks can now be trusted?

A. I have never enjoyed blind faith in the banking industry but, coming from a financial services background myself, I expected the banking fraternity to abide by the law, operate within regulatory guidelines and, as professionals, exercise a duty of care towards their clients in all their transaction. I believed they would follow a strict regime of client fact finding to establish which loans, investments and life policies were appropriate for their customers and I assumed them would pursue a responsible and ethical approach to the underwriting of anything they sold. I now know, as a result of my own experience, this has been far from the case and because of this I no longer trust them in any shape of form. Neither do I believe they possess the integrity or the incentives to address the cultural issues which have supported their long standing penchant for profiting from their customers by miss selling and manipulation. Despite the economic crisis and widespread hardship their actions have caused, they have suffered little consequence for their fraudulent behavior. No heads have rolled (other than those of their victims) and fines which bare little relation to the amount they have successfully procured and kept by way of ill gotten gains, only pay lip service to their empty promises of change. 

 Q.Would I consider taking out a mortgage or investing with them again?

 Because of a banking system which continues to reward dishonesty and avarice, I and my family lost our home, our livelihood and our financial future so there is little chance I will ever secure another mortgage and I no longer enjoy a level of remuneration which allows me to save. However, should I, by some wild stretch of the imagination one day be eligible for a mortgage, I would never agree to using a lenders in-house solicitor to convey my mortgage nor would I allow their in- house surveyors to value my property. I shall never ever again permit a mortgage broker to submit an online mortgage application in my name. Furthermore, I would not take out a joint and severally liable mortgage without written agreement from the lender confirming they would contact me separately from my co borrower (even if he is my husband) about every aspect of my mortgage application, its underwriting and its administration throughout its term. In the unlikely event I might one day have money to invest, I would not touch the banks with a barge pole.

William Paul Young also said, “Forgiveness does not create a relationship. Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible” and although I hope one day I might be able to forgive those bankers who have chosen to keep their hands firmly around my throat for the past five long years, I most definitely will not be forgetting their names.

Duty of Care

US business school graduate, National Security Agency potential recruit, governmental consultant and author of The Economic Hitman, John Perkins, once said, “This Empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, though fraud...” and although he was speaking of the way in which the US miss sold debt to under developed countries to acquire political leverage and economic gain, endless investigations into the banking crisis would suggest the US  was not the only Empire to profit from economic manipulation, cheating and fraud.

However, despite revelations that widespread manipulation, cheating and fraud has been at home within the UK’s banking culture for many a year, not one high ranking executive or board member has faced criminal charges. Like the Economic Hit Men in Perkins book, highly-paid professionals have cheated the nation out of trillions while the Parliamentary Banking Commission’s outrage has endorsed the public face of our government. However, behind closed doors, evidence suggests the leverage of the all powerful banskters has neutralized political and regulatory muscle and in so doing created an untouchable elite who still enjoy the benefits of the obscene and exceptionally lucrative carrot without fear for the consequence of the stick.

 As a result of this unspoken rule of thumb it is clear a miss selling complaint such as mine represents little more than a minor irritant to the minions of the corporate con-men who remain practiced in the art of denial.

It has been,

• Five years since I first learned my mortgage was in arrears,
• Five months since I received HBOS' response to my claim that our mortgage was miss sold,
• Five weeks since I first asked for, and listed in detail, the information I require from HBOS to progress my complaint and
• Five days since I received what they tell me is their best attempt at providing me with all I have asked for.

After hours of wading through reams of screen prints and under writing notes, I have now learned (according to HBOS),

• My husband is a professional sportsman
• We are owner/occupiers of a large house without a mortgage

And,

• Neither HBOS or their surveyors owe a Duty of Care to customers with remortgages.

Knowing full well my husband has never been a sportsman (professional or otherwise) and the place I call home has not only been owned by our landlords family for decades but been rented to us for the past four and a half years, I was suspicious HBOS’s claims regarding their obligations to provide Duty of Care might prove equally fictitious.

Further investigations have revealed,

• My conveyance was carried out by HBOS’ in house solicitor as was my survey and this situtaion may well constitute a conflict of interest in both cases
•  A surveyor cannot produce a valuation inspection report without liability, as their code of conduct indemnity insurance does not permit an opinion to be given without responsibility.

And

• A fee free remortgage submitted by a broker does not permit a lender to abdicate from their responsibilities to provide a Duty of Care.

In 2011 Lloyds Banking Group “set out a new vision and strategy to be the best bank for customers...[and promised to be] a more transparent organisation that delivers”. However, if my own case is anything to go by, HBOS, who now reside under the umbrella of Lloyds, have demonstated no plans to deliver anything but hogwash to me and the only strategy they seem to have embraced has been to send me a constant stream of inaccuracies and denials for the past five years.

In the words of American foundling father, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, “The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system” and while this may well have been true of my perceptions before our financial demise, this particular citizen has certainly had her eyes opened to the unscrupulous and negligent business practices of HBOS now.

Here's hoping documenting my battle with HBOS and posting it via my blog on the internet helps open the eyes of a fair few more!

Loss and Losses

Best known for his ironic and well plotted novels examining class, turn of the twentieth century English novelist Edward Morgan Forster once said, “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” and in October 2008 this is precisely what my family and I were forced to do.

• I let go of my home when HBOS forced its sale
• I let go of our livelihood when my husband’s business bank went into administration,

And,

• I let go of my financial future when I discovered a million pounds worth of unsecured debt.

As a result of this,

• I let go of my pride in always having paid my way,
• I let go of the friends who could not endure the knowledge of our indebtedness and
• I let go of any hope of ever affecting a recovery.

In the years that followed I lost, my financial reputation, my hair and my confidence and the life which was waiting for me definitely was not the one I would ever have chosen.

Over the past three months alone I have also let go of,

• My car under the terms of voluntary surrender
• Our Spanish apartment now it has been seized by the bank and,
• A fair amount of my time now my eighty six year old mother has become increasingly dependent on me.

However, while “letting go” has naturally been fraught with grief for I life I no longer have, the life which was waiting for me has also delivered some unexpected rewards.

• The kindness shown by those who continue to come to my aid has been nothing short of astounding
• The written word in the form of my comments and my blog has not only given me access to expertise but provided me with the voice I longed for and,
• The product of my hard work, focus and bloody minded determination has not only encouraged infamous banking giants and their regulators to sit up and take notice but from time to time it has even made them squirm!

Retired four star general and American statesman Colin Luther Powell once said, “A dream does not become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work” and although I continue to wait, without patience, for my un-redacted HBOS file there are I now days when I dare to dream all that will be required of me to let go of in the future is the mortgage shortfall debt these infamous banksters chose to create and saddle me with over the past five excruciating years.

This is the life I have planned for and this is the life I sincerely hope is waiting for me.

Delusions and Grandeur

Fifth century teacher, Buddhist monk and patriarch Bodhidharma once said, “The ignorant mind with its infinite afflictions, passions and evils is rooted in three poisons; greed, anger and delusion. Yet despite sixteen centuries of “progress” it is evident from the Parliamentary Banking Commission’s recent and lengthy interrogations these attributes have played a pivotal role in the birth of a UK banking crisis from which the Halifax Bank of Scotland has emerged as one of its most disreputable players.

Teetering on the brink of collapse in 2008, this once well thought of three hundred year old bank’s undisclosed toxic loan book was not only threatening its own survival but, after its Lloyds Banking Group takeover in January 2009, was the reason the tax payer was required to fund a twenty billion pound bailout and shareholders lost forty million pounds in share values. Formerly Britain safest bank, Lloyds is now 41% taxpayer owned while the overall financial impact of the banking crisis has been likened to that of the Second World War and is likely to cost the taxpayer in excess of sixty billion. Some say it will take as much as thirty eight years for the UK to fully recover.

However, despite these catastrophic events, the key HBOS’s players in this economic nightmare remain determined not to shoulder their responsibilities and, aside from some long overdue valueless apologies, remain unprepared to admit a reign of unprecedented greed peppered with unadulterated delusions of grandeur have cost hundreds of thousands of people their homes, their livelihoods and their financial futures. Instead of offerings of truth and transparency the Parliamentary Banking Commission has been subject to a plethora of repetitive and evasive attempts to explain why, despite previously justifying their obscene levels of remuneration on the grounds of their huge burden of responsibility, the blame for HBOS’s failure and the subsequent losses suffered by their shareholders, their customers and the taxpayer, should not rest with them.

Washing his hands of any knowledge of the “innovative” lending products and high risk strategies which brought Halifax Bank of Scotland to its knees, former 2001-2008 Chairman Lord Stevenson told MP’s his £815,000 part time role at HBOS along with his limited knowledge of banking left him ignorant of the “errors” which led to HBOS’s collapse. Conveniently forgetting he had once bragged to the FSA, in writing, that he “regards himself as a knowledgeable and well briefed” chairman who had confidence in HBOS’s “safe” position a matter of months before its near demise, did nothing to encourage this life peer who once said he would be cross if he was ever thought “dim”, to admit his culpability. 

Equally immersed in his own spin, HBOS deputy chairman (2001- 2009) Sir Ron Garrick, who, in exchange for three ten hour meetings annually over nine years, enjoyed fees totaling 1.322 million pounds, told MP's it was "by far and away the best board he had ever sat on". Convinced of both its transparency and integrity he chose to turn either a blind or ignorant eye to the fact that during his chairmanship 69% of the banks corporate loan book should never have been lent.

Repeatedly denying all knowledge of the FSA’s concerns over HBOS’s residential lending while endorsing the ridicule of those trying to abide by regulatory rules and infamously dismissing HBOS whistle blower Paul Moore in 2004, the former HBOS Chief Executive from 1999-2006 Sir James Crosby described the off loading of two thirds of his HBOS shares on his departure from the helm of his toxic sinking ship as simply balancing his portfolio. On top of the profits from this timely manoeuvre Crosby further profited from his failures with eight million pounds in bonuses and a£572,000 a year in pension.

With a general lack of banking experience as his excuse, Andy Hornby, (HBOS’s Chief Executive from 2006-2009) said,“ I bitterly regret that we did not foresee the possibility of wholesale markets closing for one whole year” and offered “his heartfelt apologies for what happen to HBOS”. However, even without the benefit of banking expertise, it is easy to see how empty these apologies are in the light of Paul Moore's warning to Hornby's predecessor James Crosby in 2004, that lending “money to people who have no jobs, no provable income and no assets” and then force feeding them products they don’t need inevitably impacts on the confidence of financial markets. Surely common sense dictated that sanctioning the launch of a another toxic product in the form of a residential mortgage product offering customers a 125% loan to value in November 2006 would be unlikely to aid market confidence or limit exposure to risk.

World renowned chess player, historian and author Henry Thomas Buckle once said, “Society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it. It is no surprised to learn those at HBOS’s helm when it neared collapse are still operating in “cloud cuckoo land”. Their denials only serve to highlight the unanswerable detachment they still enjoy from the billions in losses they socialized, the obscene rewards they were paid for failure and the consequences their delusions and greed have had on their victims. Speaking as one of the many whom HBOS chose to treat as cannon fodder, I can only wholeheartedly hope, one day very soon, the regulatory society which prepared these crimes will finally acquire the courage to regard those who commit them as criminals.

Fruitless Endeavours

Within the Dialogues of Phaedrus, ancient Greek writer Plato once said, “Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many” and as I look back on yet another year of battling with the banks there appears to have been little to encourage me to believe my best endeavors have achieved anything of note.

Determined to remain informed on all things bankster while simultaneously fighting HBOS and LLoyds has been taxing enough without running a household of lodgers, cooking and cleaning for a family of five, twice weekly visiting two elderly relatives, Chairing the Friends and organizing upwards of half a dozen events at my children’s school.  Nevertheless, increasingly self  critical of both the content and the way in which I write my blog, each post has received unsparing hours of scrutiny before it has been released into the public domain in the vain hope that it will, in some small way, make a difference.

This year alone I have ,

• Added a further thirty nine pieces to my blog roll only to acquire very few additional members as a result.

• Signed up to follow 331 people via twitter, sent 1298 tweets only to find a mere handful wish to follow me in return

• Sent numerous letters to the Financial Ombusman Service only to have my original Halifax Bank of Scotland complaint thrown out on grounds of jurisdiction 
• Had my Lloyds complaint, concerning fictitious payment arrangements, denied by an FOS adjudicator.

However despite former indications to the contrary, in some areas, I have also enjoyed some very welcome results.

Much to my delight and amazement I have,

• Quadrupled the number of page views I regularly receive on my blog posts and now have in excess of 1500 a month

• Exceeded 80 followers on twitter all of whom have discovered my blog themselves and chosen to follow me

• Not only received £500 from the FOS's for their miss handling my case, but also received an offer of settlement via the FOS in respect of my LLoyds Banking Group ficticious payment complaint. As well as upholding my claim and awarding me a further £25.00 their investigative reports states they find Lloyds behaviour completely without "empathy or understanding for our circumstances".

In addition,

• I have also received both a phone call and an email from someone within Lloyds Banking Group who, profusely apologetic, assures me he has not only taken ownership of my HBOS over valuation complaint but, in the light of its miss handling over the last twenty months, plans to both investigate and "deal with my concerns" swiftly.

Plato also says, “Everyone ought to bear patiently the results of his own conduct” and finally, after four long years of waiting without patience, the results of my own conduct appear, if I am not deceived, about to bear fruit.

Here's hoping it is not another sizable helping of prickly pears!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Literature, Legacies and Legislation

American industrialist and pioneer of the assembly line process Henry Ford once said, “Speculation is only a word covering the manipulation of prices instead of the supply of goods and services” and with an ever lengthening list of criminal practices assembling on the global doorsteps of our errant bankers, it is easy to believe dubious business initiatives embracing a sales rather than service culture have been the modus operandi by which the banking elite have manipulated their way into a life of excess and affluence.

Yet, after decades of the exploitation of financial deregulation to secure profits at any price, CBI chief John Crickland is keen to point out now is not the time to seek payback for all those who have fallen foul of this relentless reign of economic plundering.  Instead he believes we should focus on how best to prevent this legacy of banking fraudulence from coming home to roost. Not only is he calling for legislation to place time limits on claimants who have been miss sold PPI but he also believes people who have suffered Libor related losses should be legislatively discouraged from bringing cases against the culprits for fear the costs of compensation will be impossible to deliver.

However, seemingly unperturbed by either lobbyists worries or recent reports that sixty six billion pounds of bank bailout debt is unlikely ever to be repaid, some of the very same individuals who condoned both Libor manipulation and the miss selling of ever increasing numbers of financial products are still, with the endorsement of their regulators and the law, misrepresenting their forty billion pound toxic loan books to disguise their losses while enjoying sizable rewards for failure. Furthermore, despite austerity led postponement of UK retirement dates along with reduced pension incomes (current and future) for the majority, these morally challenged individuals are also to have a comfortable share of a combined pension fund amounting to in excess of one hundred and four million pounds. Fortunately for them a sum of this magnitude will provide individual annuities of several hundred thousand pounds of indexed retirement income per year.

In contrast, all I can show for the past four years of endless communication with a bank which has already been fined 3.5 million pounds for the miss handling of 45% of its complaints, is £500 in compensation from the Financial Ombudsman for their own miss handling of my case and a half page letter from HBOS advising me they are finally about to investigate my miss sold mortgage.

However, if regulators remain adamant it is both difficult and inappropriate to prosecute banksters for their crimes and legislation continues to find ways to favor them above me, in the absence of resorting to getting those responsible round the throat and attempting to throttle the life out of them, I suspect it is will prove increasingly necessary for me to tweak my game.

To this end I plan to,

• Contact Hilary Messer of RPW solicitors to explore the benefits of a mortgage miss selling class action
• Speak to a mortgage miss selling claims firm to discuss both my eligibility and how best to quantify loss

And

• Compile a list of "fictional" characters from the banking world on which to base my book.

Foundling father and third President of the United States Thomas Jefferson once said, “The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money” and despite enduring overwhelming frustration and a great deal of heartache at the hands of both the Halifax Bank of Scotland and the Financial Ombudsman Service, I must admit this last thought has left me feeling I know exactly what President Jefferson means.

Here's hoping some of my readers may be prepared to help me dish the dirt! 

Talk and Tokenism

Winston Churchill once said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results” and as a long suffering victim of the ongoing banking crisis I wish those who chose to initiate the “pile it high” culture at the expense of the individual had seen fit to resist the opportunity to amass obscene personal wealth without moral regard, for fear of the wider economic consequences. 

Martin Wheatley would like us to believe flawed management run business models, policed by employees with a conflict of interest have been the major culprit when it comes to dangerously incentivised, inadequately trained banking staff miss-selling and miss-guiding financial customers. However, I struggle to comprehend how a culture favoring lucrative bonus structures for all those involved could be effectively implemented from anywhere but the very top. I suspect instead, it is at the giddiest of corporate heights, where the promise of multi million pound, profit linked remunerations which amount to hundreds of times the average salary that the greatest conflict to customer interest actually resides. As indicated by former HBOS director Peter Cummings, who now faces fines of £500,000 and a life time ban from the financial services industry for his part in the demise of HBOS, it is far more plausible that the decision to turn a blind eye to high risk strategies, product miss-selling and neglectful duty of care to clientele is made in the board room in front of sleepy regulators instead of residing in the domain of misguided sales staff or any single executive.

Following the FSA’s survey of twenty two financial institutions we are now assured the banks and their CEO’s are more than ready to embrace recommendations for an all encompassing change in operational culture. During the coming twelve months the new Financial Conduct Authority are entrusted to enforce and monitor these changes and Martin Wheatley insists this will mean banks will no longer be permitted to,

•         Sell unsuitable products to people, especially the vulnerable
•         Arrange the wrong mortgages because it costs people their homes
•         Put their own interests and incentives ahead of their customers
•        Employ business practices which are without integrity or unfair to customers

While I firmly believe Lloyds Banking Group (under whose skirts HBOS have hidden since 2008) will have an inordinate task ahead if Mr Wheatley’s guidelines are to be adhered to, if past performance remains a reasonable indicator of what to expect in the future, HBOS will find it nothing short of impossible because, over the last six years I know from personal experience they have,

•  Paid out almost £4,000 in introducer fees my own mortgage despite there being no financial evidence to support the repayments    
•  Overvalued our home to create the necessary headroom to facilitate the sale of their mortgage product
• Refused to re-negotiate our mortgage terms or show any of the government promised forbearance when we got into trouble, despite my husband’s health problems 
•  Omitted me from all discussions with regard to our mortgage, from outset, on the grounds it was my husband’s duty to keep me informed and not theirs
•  Created a massive mortgage shortfall by unnecessarily forcing a sale when I had secured a method of servicing the loan via rental income

And,

• Reputedly covered their own losses by placing “bets” against the property market in the knowledge their severely flawed lending portfolio was about to produce a massive downturn in property values.

 Aided and abetted by an all but a hands off attitude from both the regulators and the Financial Ombudsman Service, I am repeatedly advised that without proof of "intent", I will remain unable to recover losses caused by HBOS through legal channels as my damages are too remote. Nevertheless, it is my view the FSA’s findings that miss-sales were fueled by a strategy which employed irresponsible sales incentives is merely another example of cold blooded intent at the highest level.  HBOS profits were secured via the manipulation “with intent” of banking staff, manipulation “with intent” of the LIBOR rates and manipulation “with intent” of anything else which would provide a handsome return, regardless of the price paid by the individual and the global economy.

American president Franklin D Roosevelt once said, “In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people” and in view of this, I can only hope Martin Wheatley successfully delivers his plan to address the “knock on effects to customers” of banking malpractice because some of us, as a direct result of our banks actions, are already at down at rock bottom.

And for us, there is nowhere else to go.

 

Tales of the Unexpected

American writer and humorist Marcelene Cox once said, “A vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by a mother who sees that the others get it” and for me the long wet school summer holidays have been no exception.

Over the past two months I have,

·        Cooked, cleaned and laundered for a household which has, on occasion, swelled to include an extra dozen people.

·        Escorted, dispatched and collected anything up to six passengers at any one time for delivery to a variety of destinations.

·        Shopped, chopped and packed vast quantities of picnic food for children, grandchildren and a full complement of adults.

·        Trawled, surfed, scrutinised and visited a plethora of venues to amuse both visiting family members and our offspring.

I have also,

·        Purchased and sewn fifty name tapes into my daughter’s new school uniform.

·        Made countless visits to my eighty five year old mother.

·        Assumed the role of appropriate adult for innumerable sight tests, dental checks and haircuts.

·        Sourced, priced and pondered over inordinated volumes of second hand English and Creative writing books for my sons university reading list.

·        Read, researched and commented on numerous articles exploring the ongoing global financial crisis

And,

·        Written, posted and tweeted several pieces for my Life After Debt blog.

However, because family commitments have pushed me close to the point of overload during the past nine weeks, I have not, until now, registered there has been a great deal I haven’t done.

I have not,

·        Endured repeated demands for payment from our creditors

·        Written a single letter concerning our precarious financial predicament

And nor have I,

·        Received a long overdue response from Lloyds Banking Group, HBOS or the Financial Ombudsman’s Service adjudicator with regard to my over valuation complaint.

Grateful, in some respects, to have been free of all debt fighting angst throughout the school break, it has not, however, been a summer without results.

I have,

·        Received many supportive and constructive comments on my posts

·        Acquired a mounting number of new Life After Debt followers every week

·        Had my Great Expectations post retweeted by several readers including Occupy Wall Street

And,

·        Been invited by Huffington Post Live to discuss LIBOR manipulation with former Minister of Labour for the Clinton administration, Robert Reich.

Like Marcelene Cox I believe, “No one knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the instalment plan and raised an adolescent” and as one who has already raised my fair share of adolescents while simultaneously dealing with a million pounds worth of unpaid instalment plans, I am amazed to discover not only have I been heard on both sides of the Atlantic but my previous efforts have self fuelled during a period when my personal reserves were close to empty.

Here’s hoping “true character” might eventually reap similar success in my hitherto fruitless communications with the banksters at HBOS.

But,

As ever, I shall not be holding my breath.