Why banks don't tweet?

[Andy Nguyen]

Ever wondered why banks don't respond when you send irate tweets about problems with your account? You might think they're silently hoping you'll be sucked back into the cyber-ether. But it's more likely concerns about compliance are keeping them quiet.

Case law from 1924 means financial services companies can't publicly identify an individual who has an account with them - which makes responding to customer queries via quasi-public forums such as Twitter a legal minefield, according to Aden Davies, innovation technician at HSBC.

"We're not allowed to publicly disclose that you have a relationship with us," said Davies, who was speaking at a Dell round table on B2B social-media use in central London. "It's very, very difficult the kind of conversations that we can have publicly," he added. "[Case] law that's from 1924 can't ever have envisioned [social media]."

Banking regulations mean apparently simple customer care queries submitted via the likes of Twitter have to be routed through traditional secure channels of communications to avoid falling foul of compliance law. Engaging in social-media discussions about complex investment products such as pensions involves navigating an equally complex compliance minefield.

"Banks are quite a conservative industry. Anything new is quite scary and we obviously have regulatory issues to consider - so what we can and can't say, what we can and can't do is mindboggling," said Davies. "The argument [for engaging with social-media users who have publically contacted us] is: have you given me express permission to talk to you and to publicly acknowledge that you have a relationship with us because you've stated yourself, 'I have an HSBC account'?

"In a normal world, we want express permission to talk to you."

Despite compliance-related headaches, HSBC has dabbled with social media - running two initiatives: a student bursary competition on Facebook, and its 100 Thoughts competition for business execs which included a Twitter account. The Facebook campaign especially was something of a tipping point for the bank, said Davies, as it showed how much appetite there was for discussing banking services on social forums.

http://www.silicon.com/management/f...-but-steady-social-media-revolution-39747163/

 

[Peter-Jan]

Secrecy/privacy in banking is indeed a very important thing, but it should be possible for customers and banks to agree which communication channels are OK.

 

[DominiConnor]

In >25 years of dealing with banks, that's one of the most cynical bits of bullshit I've ever come across.

Britain has amongst the worst retail banks in the world, with levels of services so dreadful that it is not possible to tell the difference between malice and incompetence.
They don't Twitter because you get to be senior at a UK bank because of who your grandma fucked, they are so inbred that even getting them to use phones is a major challenge.

This worthless horseshit ignores some very obvious evidence...

Evey major newspaper in the UK has a standard section where banks are pilloried for their incompetence, dishonesty or simply inexplicable behaviour. The banks react to this because if they don't the journalists would say "Barclays refused to speak to us, and tried the 'leave the punter on hold until he goes away' trick. If you've banked with Barclays, you know this one.

They ignore Twitter because they can.

Banks don't get social media, the moronic crap he cites is typical.
Social media is not a broadcast medium, which is actually what scares the cogenital idiots that 'manage' UK retal banks, since customers can get to talk back.

If you ever want to refute the idea of white male supremacy, introduce them to a senior British retail banker.