<<< back LTU Petitioners At Annual General Meeting [05 May 2005] LTU attracted national media coverage when it petitioned shareholders and asked the Board questions over its offshoring strategy at the Bank’s Annual General Meeting in Glasgow on 5th May. Around 80% of shareholders attending the AGM signed LTU’s petition calling on the Bank to stop transferring work to India. Many shareholders were themselves dissatisfied with having their own financial arrangements handled from India and believed that the Bank was tarnishing its reputation through pursuing this strategy. In the clearest indication yet that the Board is completely out of touch with the experience of customers and does not take seriously the level of customer dissatisfaction, the Bank’s Chairman Maarten Van den Bergh was quoted in the media as saying: that customers had congratulated him on the Bank’s policy of outsourcing jobs to India, because they could now discuss the latest developments in cricket with help-desk staff. that the Bank only received one complaint for every 4,000 calls at its Mumbai call centre. If the Board is basing its offshoring strategy on this sort of nonsense then there must surely be serious concerns for future profitability and shareholder value. Time To ‘Wake Up And Smell The Dahjeeling’! The Board are clearly either unaware of the level of customer dissatisfaction over offshoring, or simply don’t care about customer satisfaction. After all, the facts are that: The Bank’s own internal research has indicated that offshoring is the biggest single cause of complaints. Many branches report having to deal with customer complaints several times each day. Most branch staff have also indicated that they do not report customer complaints to more senior levels of management. This is because of a lack of time through work pressures, because they think it would be pointless as to do so would make little difference, or because they are discouraged from doing so by their managers. Whether it is through a lack of genuine awareness of the hostility customers have to the Bank’s offshoring strategy - or simply that the Bank chooses to turn a blind eye to the seriousness of this problem - the fact remains that many customers are so dissatisfied with having their accounts managed abroad that they might eventually feel they have no option but to transfer to other financial institutions that remain committed to operating from the UK. Click here to view 'Press Release' Click here to view 'Shareholders' Briefing' <<< back

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