I think I read somewhere that you worked in HSBC CoOps for a bit so you may not have seen all their backend but it’s a mistake to assume all the legacy banks in the UK are all running really old code - they are not.
HSBC, for instance, were introducing a new standard platform globally as far back as 2008 - So they could rollout upgrades every few years on a rolling basis and minimise the level of customised code/systems needed for each country.
Some interesting stats in the presentation below from 2008 (so dated now) but slide 11 gives an idea of what their systems were like before this. Slide 15 also gives an idea of the level of resources that legacy firms can throw at IT issues and their resources will have increased over the last decade…
They are obviously spending a lot on technology (2019: £600 million) just in the UK alone of which most is going on new functionality - what they mention on one of the slides is due in 2019/20.
On Natwest, while their apps are ok, I agree their backend needs a lot of work.
tbf before I left HSBC was going through major overhaul but yeh I just think they need to make bigger jumps to catch up on legacy maybe HSBC will do it.
I still dip into the app and website for HSBC - both show no obvious differences in the last year or two except cheque imaging in the app
My last experience with them before moving to Starling was a staff member and branch manager lying to me (it felt) about something I had read on their own website, confirmed later by Twitter. They need to be working on that sort of thing alongside any tech!
The HSBC bank end I think works really well. No matter what country website or app you log into, you’ll be presented with all of your global accounts if you choose to link them and can transfer between them very simply. Real time notifications work excellently where they’re enabled too.
They used to have a single worldwide app, similar to how Monzo is in the USA, but phased that out in favour of country specific apps which were fully localised and worked a lot better in their local environments. I know Monzo’s US accounts have some terminology and instructions which don’t work in the US banking landscape for example.
It’s interesting. As Bó is marketed as a spend account, presumably it just expects its users to withdraw on their NatWest debit card.
Perhaps the data shows that people, on average, only use an ATM twice a month anyway, but it’s strange NatWest doesn’t carry its (standard) free ATM fee structure across, though on the other hand, banks have been dying to charge for ATM use (Barclays tried it 20 years ago) so in some ways it’s not surprising the High Streets are nudging us to accept paying for services we once took for granted as free – NatWest (and Barclays!) already does this by charging for its cashback account. But NatWest makes a big deal about its cardless ATM feature, so it’s odd that this function isn’t front and centre in Bó as well. The Get Cash feature is about as fintech as it gets.
