Stupid banks

My bank decided to get into "wealth management" some time ago. They did this via the normal route - they bought out a company that was offering share trading and unit trusts.

Now as it happens, I already had a bunch of unit trusts with the company that they bought, and I therefore had an account that I could use to access account info via the internet.

I also have an online account with the bank. A year or so after the acquisition, my bank started offering share trading via the same website.

When I signed up for share trading, they gave me yet another account and password, and the password properties on the new account are different to the banking account. The share trading is obviously done through the acquisition, and all they have done with their web site is provide a branded link through to the broking subsidiary.

It is now about 3 years after the acquisition. I still have three accounts with three different passwords. I can't look at all my financial stuff in one place. If I want to buy shares, I have to logon to the bank website, transfer money to a certain account, logoff, logon to the subsidiary website (if I can remember the password) and then buy shares.

It's bloody stupid. You'd think by now that they might have figured out that these three accounts belong to the same person, and allowed me to consolidate them into one account so that I could have one password, and easier access to my stuff.

But no. They haven't. They are a typically stupid, lumbering bank.

They do manage to post me all sorts of marketing crap all the time - buy some life insurance or house insurance or some other insurance. Because I have three accounts, I seem to get three times the normal amount of marketing spam in my letter box from this bank. They have now taken to posting me a letter and then phoning me up to follow up. That means three times the usual volume of annoying phone calls at home from some marketing call centre in India.

I am thinking of asking the bank to remove all my phone details from their computer records. It will be interesting to see how they react to that one.

Anyway, my point is that I can't believe that it has taken so long for this bank to not integrate their computer systems with the broking company. These buyouts are supposed to be about reducing costs and increasing synergy and all that crap. So far, I have seen nothing of the sort. I know that integrating computer systems is incredibly hard and expensive, so next time a company manager gets up and proclaims that his next acquisition will reduce costs and all that, take it with a pinch of salt. Or a bucket. Take your pick.