Metro Bank, which is Britain\u2019s first new high street lender for more than a century, opened its doors today in Holborn, central London.<\/p>\n
The bank welcomed dogs with a bowl of water and a bone and offered their owners free breakfast.<\/p>\n
Dog lover, US billionaire and former Commerce Bank owner, Vernon Hill, said \u201cdogs rule at Metro Bank!\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, it aims to make banking a \u201cfun retail experience\u201d and is focusing on shop hours by opening seven days a week, from 8am to 8pm on weekdays, 8am to 6pm on Saturday and 11am to 4pm on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It will only close on Christmas Day, New Year\u2019s Day, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n
The bank is opening another branch in Earls Court next month and is proposing to build a network of more than 200 branches over the next decade.<\/p>\n
Each branch will have toilets and free coin-counting machines.<\/p>\n
Accompanied by his pet dog Duffy, Mr Hill told Reuters today: \u201cWe\u2019re in the business of turning customers into fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, the banking sector is monopolised by the \u201cBig four\u201d banks but Metro Bank said it will employ more cashiers than the big four, while keeping its call centre in London.<\/p>\n
It said its call centre will aim to pick up a call on the second ring every time.<\/p>\n
Craig Donaldson, chief executive of Metro Bank, told Sky News: \u201cWe\u2019re going to win customers by wowing them.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, there was much criticism after one analyst said the bank\u2019s mortgage and savings products are not competitive enough to enter the best-buy tables.<\/p>\n
It is, though, charging interest of 13% on credit card purchases and cash advances, which is better than the industry average of 18.5% for purchases and 25.6% for cash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Metro Bank, which is Britain\u2019s first new high street lender for more than a century, opened its doors today in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}