… not really, because of the scale and spread of both businesses.
More “IT people” does not equate to a cooler app.
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The scale is very similar in terms of the numbers if customers.
Mind you, I was once on a team of three in NI when the corresponding team in GB was thirty. That was for a functionally identical system too. That was just the dev teams - obviously the ops teams needed to be different sizes.
Development effort does not scale elastically in that direction tho. More features/products, more devs. Co-op Bank have a product range multiple times wider than Coventry BS offer.
Co-op Bank is also a clearing bank which means they have to support a load of activity which Coventry BS leave to HSBC. This will require resource, despite the fact it’ll be invisible to customers merely comparing apps.
Finally, despite Coventry BS having a similar number of customers I would guess there are far fewer using their app/online servicing than Co-op Bank, and those that do probably use the app far less often than an average Co-op Bank app/online user; purely because people tend to check their savings and mortgage less often than their current accounts and credit cards; set and forget vs stuff you might actually want to monitor.
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Yes, there will be things like the treasury function that is mainly a CoOp thing. My thinking is that they will bring payment processing in-house rather than sticking with HSBC and that could complicate things.
Who knows, maybe Nationwide/Virgin will be the first to be fully integrated. That said, I still think Coventry will surprise us.
There is only Nationwide at the top tier now.
Coventry (and Yorkshire) are definitely mid-tier.
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I think integration between both groups is going to be a slow process over several years.
Coventry for instance only released their app at a start of this year, while Virgin is well known to be running multiple different systems due to its history
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It really depends what you mean by fully integrated. By some measures BOS and Lloyds Bank are not fully integrated - they operate with a common system but separate licenses and (mostly) separate branches - I know BOS branded branches allegedly will do some limited Lloyds Bank account servicing but Halifax and Lloyds are totally separate.
They do however co-exist on the same backend, and share contact centres and more or less everything else.
This is the destination for both these “integrations” eventually I reckon; neither will be able to fully mutualise their assets.
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Completes on New Years Day. Both will operate separately for a period they expect with take “several years”.
Have you guys seen this? Coventry Building Society Current Accounts | Fair Investment
Implies that a launch is coming soonish.
Coventry haven’t even taken over the Co-op Bank yet!
It sounds as if that website is describing the old MoneyManager account that they used to offer
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The link I just posted isn’t describing Moneymanager nor Coventry First as the terms are quite different.
There’s nothing to stop them offering a new current account before the takeover even happens. I don’t know where that site is getting the information, but it seems to be describing a new account.
The terms aren’t different; they’re the same.
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No, they aren’t. Moneymanager doesn’t do 1.1%, bonus for a year, nor require £1000 payin. That’s the Fair investment link which seems a new thing.
Well it certainly used to because that interest rate and the minimum pay in are both mentioned on this old Coventry page:
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Fair enough. Wonder why it popped up now though given that Coventry First hasn’t been on offer for a good number of years now?
Zero chance of Coventry BS launching new current accounts of their own in the short term.
Makes no sense if the intention is to have the two businesses running on a common backend eventually.
They already have a small base of legacy current account users if they want to do a limited trial of a future platform.
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