Coronavirus is no longer new, some big corporates should be ashamed at their inability to adapt

Businesses big enough to know better can no longer hide behind coronavirus – using it as an excuse not to move quickly has been shown up and now it’s affecting economic recovery, writes Chris Blackhurst

Start-up businesses are complaining they cannot set up bank accounts. Why? Because the big banks are closed to applications for new business current accounts or they are warning of major delays (AFP/Getty)

During the pandemic there is no shortage of people I could award a prize to for being the most irritating.

I could start with some of the politicians and scientists, but they’ve already being showered with criticism, and besides, there are so many of them to choose from. There are the locals – the lady who walks around with a broom handle, attached to which is a sign saying “two metres” or the elderly chap who holds a stick at waist height and waves it around as he goes along the pavement. It’s two metres long, don’t you know, as he keeps shouting for people to move aside. There’s a regular on my dog walk who jumps so far to avoid me on the path she goes into a bush. Every time.

But the one I really can’t stand is the woman who does the voice message on calls to my bank. She speaks in a soft, soothing, ever-so English middle-class way. She sounds late-middle-aged verging on the  elderly, could be someone’s granny. I’m getting Miss Marple as I hear her droning on.

Presumably she’s an actress, because anyone else would find it impossible to read the nonsense she is spouting without bursting into laughter. We want to open a new account for our son and all we hear is her seeking our forbearance in this difficult time. She pays tribute to the staff who are working, saying how appreciative the bank is of their sacrifice. Seriously. We’re asked to be especially tolerant because while we’re talking to them we might hear the noise of pets and children in the background. Then she intones that we might be kept waiting because of the pressure of calls, unless we’re key workers in which case we can press a button now and jump the queue.

It’s becoming my corporate health barometer: the companies that stepped up and the ones that didn’t and aren’t doing, even now

That’s it. After that, there is nothing except some dreary music, punctuated every so often by her soft, supposedly reassuring, tones telling us that they’re very busy right now.

It’s no use going to the nearby branch. It’s shut, closed for good well before the virus. Every time we go to the next nearest one there is a queue back to the door. Far better they say to apply online or on the phone. Except it isn’t. Emails simply disappear, never to be answered. As for calling, our record so far is three-and-a-half hours of waiting – it was a free line (at least they supply that) and we put it on speaker, and went about our business – and in the end we just gave up. No interruptions from pets and children for us.

Why does it have to be this bad? We’re now in the seventh month of the outbreak and still, big companies – banks in particular but not only banks – treat the consumer, their customers, the little people, with contempt. There is a damaging economic aspect to this. Start-up businesses are complaining they cannot set up bank accounts. Why? Because the big banks are closed to applications for new business current accounts or they are warning of major delays.

Entrepreneurs creating new businesses are the engine drivers of recovery. As shops, bars and others are boarded up and go into liquidation we look to new businesses to take their place. That’s what happened in previous crises, it’s what led us out of the recession following the credit crunch in 2009. This time round there is precious sign of it being repeated.

Instead of falling over themselves to help, to provide the accounts and money handling and management systems that those setting up a new enterprise require, they say they’re too busy assisting existing clients with coronavirus loans. They’re not prepared to divert resources to opening new accounts. The truth is they don’t want to know, they can’t be bothered, there’s not enough money in it for them – they can make more from servicing existing accounts.

But it’s not just new business accounts. We’ve experienced it with our wish for a new account for our son. It’s anyone who has a call centre or delivery service – first you’ve got to try and get through, then you’re warned of delays. Sometimes the phone just cuts and you have to endure the same rigmarole again.

At the risk of sounding like the mellifluous Miss Marple (there’s no chance of that, I am screaming in anger) Covid-19 is not new, the virus has not just begun its spread – we’ve been living with it for more than half a year.

It’s becoming my corporate health barometer: the companies that stepped up and the ones that didn’t and aren’t doing, even now. In the former can be put Amazon, Next, Apple... and that should tell you something. Is it any coincidence that they’re among the most successful of businesses? The others should be ashamed of themselves, their lack of interest, their inability to adapt, to move quickly, has been exposed.

Where the banks are concerned, the government must intervene. It cannot sit back and allow tomorrow’s would-be business titans, future wealth creators and employers, to languish. The economy needs pump priming and new businesses are central to that bounce back. The banks, which look to the government for so much, need telling – in choicer language and more directly and forcefully than the terrible Miss Marple.