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- Email emerged a week after bank's bill for mis-selling PPI topped £10billion
- Leaked message sent by an unnamed regional manager to a branch
- Employees told to make as many appointments as possible, email reveals
- Staff also set targets for referrals - passing customer to another department
- Manager warns staff who fail to meet targets will have their bonuses cut
- Lloyds insists email 'in no way representative of behaviour'
- Bank has launched an internal investigation and is taking disciplinary action
Lloyds is continuing to pressurise staff to mis-sell credit cards, loans and insurance, a leaked email has revealed – just months after the bank was fined £28million for promoting a ruthless sales culture. The email, which has emerged a week after Lloyds’s bill for mis-selling payment protection insurance topped £10billion, reveals the aggressive sales culture which still pervades the bank. It was sent by an unnamed regional manager to a branch and shows how employees are set strict targets to make as many appointments with customers as possible. It uses industry jargon such as ‘helping’ customers with credit cards, and ‘needs met’ to describe sales. Staff are also set targets for ‘referrals’, which means passing a customer to another department of the bank which will try to sell them a different product or investment. This is known in the industry as ‘cross-selling’.
In the email, the manager piles the pressure on branch staff and chastises them for falling short.
It says: ‘I will require the number of lending appointments booked again by email before you go home from every branch. Detail needed – how many lending [sic] booked for the next 5 days, how many advisers in the business.’ Referring to the number of daily appointments advisers are expected to make in a week, it warns: ‘I’ll give you a clue that 1’s, 2’s and 3’s are simply not acceptable.’ Another extract states: ‘9 customers helped with a credit card (which embarrassingly is our busiest day of the week!!!). With volumes and productivity being measured, I don’t understand how 43 advisers can only help 20 customers with an internet (a free product?) and 0 with a credit card (another free product?)’....Read more here
Previous AAD Blog pages: Lloyds Bank staff still pressured into flogging products