Online banking made easy - French style

Notice anything...er...ever-so-slightly out of place in the title?

Hint...the idea of a service being both "uncomplicated" and "French" at the same time - two attributes which, sadly, so often reveal themselves to be contradictory.

Of course, that's a gross generalisation.

Or it would be if it weren't for the fact that service in France - no matter in which particular domain - is not quite up to the standards of what might be expected.

The corporate cliché about the direction of a business being determined by the demands of its clientele (summed up in the maxim that the "customer is king") invariably becomes confused if not downright lost when put to the test in France.

And it's as true for online banking as it is for any other sector.

Of course it shouldn't be. The very concept of conducting financial transactions online is...well, very 21st century.

And therein lies the problem perhaps.

It's not that France doesn't have online banking.

Most of the country's main high street banks offer the service and some have even developed their own purely online affiliates: Banque Populaire has BRED,  CIC - Filbanque, Societé Générale - Boursorama and BNP Paribas - Hello bank

It's just...well, for those with regular accounts, the use of the online facilities can be...difficult.

I needed to make a transfer at the weekend.

International you'll understand, even if it meant Euro to Euro.

France to Italy (so you knew trouble would be a-brewin')

The princely sum of €150

First step was to log on to my BNP account and go through the whole  rigmarole of adding a new contact to my list of recipients.

It didn't matter that the payment would be a one-time affair (or that the amount was paltry).

The "rules" stipulate that every time you make an international transfer to a new beneficiary, the same process has to be followed.

First up, fill in the amount.

Next step - complete the recipient's IBAN (or International Bank Account Number) then the BIC (Bank Identifier Code).

Everything seemed in order - a quick double-check.

Yep.

Painless so far.

The final stage was to receive a text-message confirmation on my mobile 'phone so that the transfer could be made.

Except...the number the bank had on its file was that of my previous 'phone.

I had informed them in June last year that my number had changed. And there in the "emails sent" box was a copy of what I had written.

Time for a snotty email to the person responsible for customer relations (yes, they still have real people to answer queries at BNP - just not outside of regular working hours).

So transfer aborted and over to my account at Crédit Agricole to see whether I would fare any better there.

By now, you can probably guess where this is going.

Crédit Agricole puts customers through pretty much the same palaver to make an international transfer...amount, IBAN, BIC, reason (not obligatory) and that final page telling me that it would take three days - THREE WHOLE DAYS - for the both the new recipient and the transfer to be approved.

Result?

Well, no result.

Over 30 minutes online to use a service which the banks promise is "simple, smart, and secure"  and I had got absolutely nowhere.

Update. Heard back from my personal banker at BNP later in the week to be told that I could have changed my mobile telephone number myself online.

I simply had to log on to the page which contained my personal details (lost on a website that seems to believe user-friendliness equates with presenting the maximum information in the most complicated format imaginable) and change the number.

I would then receive - by post - confirmation that I had changed the number to which text message confirmations should be sent.

So simple.

Welcome to online banking - French style.

French bank blows whistle on illegal immigrant

Last weekend Yaro S. as he's being referred to in the French media, turned up at a branch of the bank Société Générale in the Parisian suburb of Boulogne to withdraw money from his account.

As is always the case for anyone wanting to make withdrawals, the cashier asked him to present some form of identity, and Yaro handed over his carte de séjour or residence permit.

The only problem was that it was a fake one. And on realising that, the clerk informed the police and went a step further by closing the doors of the bank and ensuring that Yaro was unable to make a getaway until they had arrived.

The 41-year-old Mauritanian was taken into detention and now faces deportation back to his country of origin.

The fake ID according to La Cimade, a French non-governmental organisation that offers legal assistance to undocumented immigrants, was exactly the same piece of identity Yaro had given when opening the account in the first place back in 2005.

Moreover Yaro, who has been living in France since 2002 and has been working in the kitchen of a restaurant, has a request pending with French authorities to regularise his status as a resident.

Now to some reading this, the actions of the bank staff might smack of "denunciation" and indeed unions have criticised any behaviour by bank employees, which might to many seem overzealous and give the appearance of them wishing "to participate actively in the political process of checking identity papers."

That is not the role of staff, but as a union official, Michel Marchet, points out, there is something of a dilemma.

"When they (the employees) realise a fake ID is being presented, they are required to report it," he says.

"It's not necessarily taking part in tracking down illegal immigrants, but an obligation to ensure that there is no fraud or money laundering occurring, something for which fake identities are often used," he adds.

Société Générale's position on what happened runs along the line of "it being the responsibility of the bank to ensure that the person withdrawing money is also the one to whom the account belongs".

But it neatly sidesteps the issue that the only way Yaro was able to open the account in the first place back in 2005 was by using the very same ID that became his undoing last weekend.

For La Cimade though, what has happened to Yaro is part of a disturbing trend here in France.

"This case is symptomatic of a growing tendency to 'inform' (on illegal immigrants)," it says, pointing out that over the summer three other cases of illegal immigrant being denounced have succeeded.

French lottery winner ends up big loser - with bank's help

Who hasn't at one time or another had a passing fantasy as to what they might do if they suddenly came into a lot of money by winning the lottery? Give up work, get that new car, house, holiday, boat - hey perhaps even a 'plane. It's the dream of millions perhaps and then "bam" welcome back to reality.

Of course many lottery winners continue to lead "regular" lives, they invest sensibly and live comfortably off a monthly income with just a dash of madness thrown in for good measure.

There are plenty of feel good stories out there of what happened to former big winners.

But there are also those that, perhaps through little fault of their own, end up penniless or at least threatened with bankruptcy. And such is the tale of one man whose plight hit the headlines here in France at the beginning of the week.

His story was revealed in the national daily Le Parisien, and for the moment he's not being referred to directly by name, but simply as "Jacques".

Back in 2001, this family man in his forties won the handsome total of €900,000 and not being used to such a grand lump sum (who would be?) he went to the local branch of his bank for some solid financial advice.

A wise move by anyone's standards. And the manager encouraged him to invest €780,000 of his winnings variously on a savings account based on the performance of shares, life insurance and some stocks.

Then six months later after Jacques was fired from his job, his bank advised him to open another account to play the stock market on the Net - what the French call the "Boursicoter" - and provided him with a €100,000 overdraft limit. Even though he had little or nor previous experience of speculating, Jacques turned out to do reasonably well, "winning" nearly €100,000 over the next three years.

He reportedly seemed to have a pretty good relationship with his branch manager, backed up to a great extent by the fact that he was then allowed another loan in 2005 of €200,000 even though he was officially unemployed and didn't have a regular fixed income.

Fair game. After all remember Jacques still had assets of several hundreds of thousands of euros and he was being advised by his branch manager.

The game started to hot up and Jacques began speculating with serious amounts of money - up to €1 million a month at one point - always with the approval of his manager and even, so he now claims, with the manager stepping in and making those investments for him. In 2006 alone more than €10.6 milion was "played".

You know where this is going don't you?

Fortunes changed and Jacques started to lose money - BIG sackfulls of the stuff with an ever expanding overdraft being granted into the bargain. And then in September 2007 the bank manager - his financial advisor - was moved to another branch

His replacement took one look at the debts Jacques had accrued and immediately slapped a ban on him borrowing any more to play the bourse.

The bank didn't stop there though. Jacques was first requested and now has been taken to court to repay the outstanding €600,000 debt immediately otherwise face repossession of his house, and his other stocks, investments and life insurance policies.

For his part, Jacques has launched a counter claim of €700,000 in damages saying the bank failed in its duty "to offer advice and information".

And the bank in question? Well here's the rub to the whole tale. It's none other than the one, which in its advertising here in France says "On est là pour vous aider" or "We're there to help you."

Yes you've guessed it, the very same Société Générale, which earlier in the year hit the international headlines when one of its futures traders, Jerome Kerviel, managed to lose it a whopping €5 billion - give or take the odd centime. But that's quite a different story.

For the moment, over Jacques' case, it has made that most illuminating of statements "no comment".

Rogue trader is back at work

There’s good news of sorts for Jérôme Kerviel, the junior trader who lost France’s second biggest bank, Sociéte Générale, a pile of money back at the end of January. He has found himself a new job.

But the twist in the tale that's difficult to believe is that he has been hired by a software company, Lemaire Consultants and Associates (LCA), that as part of its total package of services, also deals with offering its customers risk and crisis management coaching.

Now some might think it a little odd that Kerviel should be offered a job in a firm specialising in areas not a million miles removed from those that allowed him to commit such a massive fraud in the first place.

After all the 31-year-old managed to lose a cool €5 billion of Société Générale’s money by placing bets on what direction the stock market would take. On that evidence alone he is neither a particularly good assessor of risk nor much of an expert on crisis management.

He might however turn out to be a master of fraud if the claims of his former bosses are to be believed. When they discovered that Kerviel had committed more than €50 billion of the bank’s money in purchases, they quickly cut their losses and sold massively incurring that €5 billion deficit.

It’s also slightly strange that that the courts have agreed to let him work for the software company.

He was released from police detention at the end of March, but had a number of restrictions placed upon him. Those include not being allowed to enter a trading room or engage in any activity related to the financial markets.

He also cannot leave Paris and its suburbs without permission and has had to surrender his identity card and passport.

While Kerviel’s new employer has refused to comment on exactly what his new job involves, and he’s only on a probationary period, it takes a fair stretch of the imagination to believe that he’s the company’s new tea boy.

Temporarily at least Kerviel seems to have landed on his feet thanks largely to the generosity of Jean-Raymond Lemaire, the owner of LCA.

Lemaire is the very same man who let kept Kerviel away from the prying lenses of the world’s media by letting him stay at his home just after the trading scandal broke. He has also advised Kerviel on his legal defence in the Société Générale case.

Clearly every rogue trader deserves a guardian angel.

How not to make money

By anyone’s reckoning €5 billion is a heck of a lot of money for any company to lose, but that’s just about the sum – give or take the odd centime – that Jerome Kerviel reportedly cost his bank, Société Générale, last week.

The 31-year-old futures trader had been betting on what direction the stock market would take and committed more than €50 billion of the bank’s money in purchases.

Every times traders buy they are supposed to balance their activities with an equivalent sale but apparently Kerviel had the know-how to fool the bank’s safeguard system and run up acquisitions of gargantuan proportions.

Finding itself in deep doo-doo, and overcommitted to an extent that even surpassed the size of France’s annual budget deficit (€35 billion) the bank sold massively just days after the “fraud” was discovered and in the process had to face up to the largest single rogue trader loss ever.

Société Générale, one of France’s major banks, compounded the whole mess by trying to cut its losses on exactly the same day as global markets took a tumble and the value of shares plummeted worldwide.

Now it’s not the first time a bank has been massively fiddled by one of its employees. Briton Nick Leeson notoriously managed to bring Barings Bank to its knees back in 1995, doing much the same thing.

But the amount involved (four times that of Leeson’s losses) and the fact that it happened to a bank with a reputation for being such a stickler for security, has shaken the financial services industry this side of the channel and of course provided fodder galore for the country’s hungry hacks.

Even though Kerviel maintains he was working alone, many analysts are questioning whether it was in fact possible for him to run up such enormous risks without the knowledge of his superiors.

The general perception is that even if he were not exactly given the green light to act in the way he did, his bosses must have been turning the proverbial blind eye.
Not so, claims Société Générale’s chief executive, Daniel Bouton whose offer to step down was rejected by the bank’s board. He insists Kerviel was acting alone without anybody else’s knowledge.


Hmmmn. Interesting that the furore over the size of the alleged fraud conveniently detracted public and media attention from a sizeable hit Société Générale has taken in recent months in the sub prime mortgage investment fiasco currently cutting swathes into banks’ profits around the world.

If Bouton’s tendering his resignation was rejected, that of several other executives was accepted, surely implying an admission of the bank’s complicity in the whole affair.


For the moment though Kerviel is being portrayed as a rogue trader. A computer geek who had somehow lost touch with the real world and was able to play out his betting fantasies in a virtual “futures” reality.

He had an in-depth knowledge of the banks rigid systems of controls as a result of several years spent working in exactly the department responsible for implementing those checks before becoming a trader in 2004. In other words he knew how to beat the system.

But Kerviel wasn’t even a high money earner, and reportedly not “gambling” for personal financial gain. With an annual salary of around €100,000 – far less than the millions earned by high-flying traders - he simply wanted peer recognition as being excellent at his job and boost his annual bonus. So his defence currently goes.

Somehow this story feels as though it has longer legs to it.

Persiflage