I guessed! I take your point mind you, just a bad example! 
Anyone have access to this article?
Unfortunately, I don’t have a Times subscription but I would be interested to know what the article says.
If you register you get two free articles per week.
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Thanks for that, didn’t realise. I thought I would have to sign up to a £16/mth subscription as a minimum.
I can see the article before it paywalls off mentions problems with how the bank handles sensitive data, can anyone please elaborate on what the issue is or was?
When they issued new cards, apparently they texted a PIN reminder in a normal unprotected SMS - therefore potentially exposing your existing PIN to someone who could see your phone screen.
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Ah, fair enough… Also the replacement cards to activate only required the last few digits of the long card number… Which stayed the same between the old and replacement cards, security at Bo seems to be a joke at best.
I just got a text with a pin from them today randomly, they said they sent it as all the old cards would stop working today, ( I haven’t activated my new one yet)
Guess they should have bought a challenger
Tasking the CEO of Mettle with the project of turning the fortunes of Bo around seems a bit of a big ask… even if there are lots of similar aspects to the role managing 140 odd people at Bo and then another hundred or so at Mettle is no small feat. Perhaps this new CEO has what it takes…
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Uhoh.
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Looks like RBS are hoping the people doing Mettle can do Bo at the same time. More likely they both go down do you think, or is it a wise move to cut costs? I can see how they needed to stop spending so much, but surely the more pertinent question should be ‘how do we spend more wisely’ rather than ‘how do we spend less’.
Can’t ever recall Bo commenting on any of these matters btw, wonder if they have a PR manager at all.
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Interesting. So will Mettle become both a consumer and business brand?
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Bye bye Bó.
Controversial opinion: there’s an outside chance that this means that RBS NatWest gets it. Part of the cultural change needed is to run diverse experiments, not too be afraid to fail but to pull the plug when something just isn’t working…
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I wonder if all the ‘social media influencers’ they targeted last year and got to set up accounts and then show off their yellow debit cards will be doing a follow-up about how upset they are now that such a great bank is closing? 
I’ve just had the email from them. Looks like they’ve not set an actual closing date yet and are just asking people to empty their accounts.
I would’ve thought if Mettle is ‘taking over’ they would’ve had some sort of option for people to opt in to transfer their account though?
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my guess would be the adoption rate is fairly low and thus isn’t worth their time to setup a migration route. especially if the integration hasn’t happened yet.
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Yeah - I was just (re)thinking that too. Just shows how many actual account holders they had using the account regularly that it’s just not worth the investment to even promote this as ‘Bo and Mettle are merging to create a great new banking service under the Mettle brand!’ and they’re literally just dumping what Bo customers they had.
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Here is the email from Bó (for people who are not account holders to see). It is a shame, but I didn’t use it because it lacked so many features as they targeted it as a spending account rather than a bank account. I still use the RBS app so hopefully the backend will move over there.
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RBS whole approach was half arsed, it was a product from 5 years ago, now the digital banks are all grown up, it looked like something that had been stuck in a risk committee and finally got let out.
If Natwest do anything with it, they should use the technology in its main stream banking, and not just leave it as a banking app in Mettle
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