A new dog friendly High Street bank opened in the UK last Thursday.
Metro Bank is the first new retail bank to open in over a 100 years and the launch was accompanied with gimmicks such as free breakfasts for clients and free dog treats for customers’ pets.
Over the next 10 years, Metro Bank plans to run more than 200 branches in the greater London area. It hopes to have an equal split between commercial and retail banking and will offer a full range of banking services including its own branded credit card.
Metro hopes to woo customers away from the UK’s largest banks by opening from early till late, seven days a week and providing better quality, faster customer service than its rivals.
However, it was expected that the bank’s mortgage lending policy would be reasonably conservative and this appears to be true with none of their products making it onto the best-buy tables. Their two-year fixed rate deal for someone with a deposit of 40% is 4% whilst a variable rate deal over the same time period and with the same deposit is 3.50%. People wanting a mortgage of up to 80% LTV will pay an additional 1% mortgage rate.
Chief executive, Craig Donaldson, says that the bank aims to be very competitive with a very structured approach to its products. For example, all contractor mortgages require an arrangement fee of £500, all credit card holders pay a rate of 13% and the interest rate on all loans is10%.
Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the UK Treasury Committee, said recently that the government wants to see competition among lenders. Hopefully the addition of this new High Street bank will go some way towards meeting that requirement and showing the current banks how banking should be done.
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Image: Happy Holidays from me and this dog by Zach Klein
