Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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branches and hiked up charges. Further afield, London’s Financial Times reported in
[date?] that, ‘The government had called on banks to disclose which services they are
offering to the low­paid and unemployed in a bid to shame them into doing more to end
financial exclusion.’ The article went on to say that MPs had been irritated by evidence
that banks reject applications to join from people who cannot produce passports or
utilities bills, the standard forms of identification required to prevent bogus accounts
being set up by money launderers.
Back in New Zealand, the public’s negative attitude towards banks is compounded
by the fact that they are almost completely owned overseas. In 2004, [how many?] banks
were registered with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, although the country was served
predominantly by just six: Westpac, ANZ, Bank of New Zealand (BNZ), ASB Bank,
National Bank and TSB Bank. The first five of these are now wholly Australian­owned, so
that only the small TSB Bank is fully New Zealand­owned. 7
In OctoberA 1999 Massey University report, by Banking Studies Director David Tripe,
said, ‘Profits were becoming excessive and banks now had an annualised average return
on equity of 24%.’ 8
Mark Colgate conducted two studies of bank customer satisfaction in 1998 and 1999 for
Auckland University Business School’s marketing department. 9 His second study found
that the banks that were making the biggest profits and those that were the most efficient
were generally held in lowest regard by their customers. During 1999, when the study was
carried out, the overall level of customer satisfaction with all major banks except the Bank
of New Zealand fell. Colgate’s survey also showed that one in five retail customers and a
slightly higher proportion of business customers had considered changing banks in the
preceding year. The main reasons given for wanting to switch were high fees and the