Here at Kvantor we have made it our mission to disrupt the global banking system. Did you know that one of our co-founders actually graduated with a thesis centered around methods to improve the quality of banking services? Naturally we come across many examples of banks being… well, frankly: a-holes to their clients. Here are 5 examples of ridiculous behavior by banks.

Holding you money hostage for no reason

Some banks routinely hold back payments made by SWIFT for 5 to 10 days. Your money just floats in no-mans-land until the bureaucracy decides to return it to its rightful owner. Not only does this cost you interest, but it can and does affect businesses in many other ways by decreasing turnover and limiting liquidity. Whose money is it anyway? Charging crazy fees on top of the inter-bank rates

The real rate that banks pay when they are trading with each other is called the inter-bank rate. Banks make money by charging you a fee on top of this rate but they are not obliged to disclose this fee to their customers. When you break down the math you’ll find that banks charge as much as 13% on a round-trip exchange meaning if you changed the money then changed it back you would lose 13%. Not updating their ancient systems

Did you know that 40 years ago (pre-internet, pre-email and very pre-blockchain) it took 5 days to send a wire transfer from one country to another? Today it still takes 3 to 5 business days to do the same thing. This complete lack of progress is largely because many banks still work off COBOL, a programming language so ancient there aren’t many programmers under retirement age that know how to program in it. This allows banks to charge outrageous fees and invest your money for a week without paying interest. Charging for receiving a transfer

Here’s one that should get your blood boiling. We can live with the fact that banks charge fees for sending a transfer — bankers gotta eat too — but we believe this service could be safer, faster and cheaper. HOWEVER: some banks still seem to think that it’s ok to charge the receiver a fee as well. Even phone companies — not the most beloved corporations that capitalism brought us — have never dared to propose the equivalent, namely charging people for receiving a call. That’s because it borders on criminal behavior. Still using correspondent accounts

When you transfer money from one bank to another the money doesn’t just go from bank A to bank B. For totally unnecessary reasons your money first goes to a correspondent bank where it just chills for a while before it’s being forwarded to you. Wikipedia describes a correspondent account as follows: “it’s an account (often called a nostro or vostro account) established by a banking institution to receive deposits from, make payments on behalf of, or handle other financial transactions for another financial institution.” You guessed it already: for facilitating the transfer, the correspondent bank will levy a charge.

Have you had similar experience with your banks? Tell us about it in the comments below!