Jon Stein here, CEO of Betterment.com. Our goal at Betterment is to make smart investing simple and accessible (as it should be!) – and an important part of that mission is explaining things as clearly as possible. I agree that most bank and investment firm communications are incomprehensible. Granted, it’s not always easy to make complex concepts simple – the work is in choosing what’s important to focus on, and what is unnecessary detail. I’d love to ask for you and your readers’ help in making our site and product more accessible. Check us out at http://www.betterment.com.

We love your writing and have re-tweeted and written linking posts to some of your pieces. Thanks!

Jon.

With all due respect, please consider walking the talk and banking somewhere other than a Too ‘Bigger’ to Fail institution like Citi.

http://www.polycapitalist.com/2010/12/fe d-governor-hoenig-too-bigger-to-fail.htm l

Thank you,

The PolyCapitalist

“19.1 Regulation 7 states:
(1) A seller or supplier shall ensure that any written term of a contract is
expressed in plain, intelligible language.
(2) If there is doubt about the meaning of a written term, the interpretation
which is most favourable to the consumer shall prevail …
19.2 Clarity in contractual language is widely recognised as desirable in itself,
but the Regulations go beyond promoting that objective alone. In line with
their purpose of protecting consumers from one-sided agreements, and the
requirement of the underlying Directive that ‘consumers should actually be
given an opportunity to examine all the terms’ (Recital 20), they have to be
understood as demanding ‘transparency’ in the full sense. As the High
Court has found in a case relating to the fairness of bank charges, it
requires ‘not only that the actual wording of individual clauses …be
comprehensible to consumers, but that the typical consumer can
understand how the term affects the rights and obligations that he and the
seller or supplier have under the contract.’46
19.3 It follows that what is required is that terms are intelligible to ordinary
members of the public, not just lawyers. They need to have a proper
understanding of them for sensible and practical purposes. It is not
sufficient for terms to be clear and precise for legal purposes, except in
contracts normally entered only on legal advice.”

http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports  /unfair_contract_terms/oft311.pdf;jsess ionid=1D9163E1CDA404BBC8E21712FF17B8BF

I am surprised more financial contracts are not thrown out under this law given the standard is what a typical english person would understand….

There must be something in the US that protects the consumer from the corporates and the banks, surely?

Also sending out the whole agreement when a tiny bit has been changed is not terribly green and it is even harder to scour a document to see what the new changes are. That agreement is a legal contract, you should really keep it – no I didn’t keep mine either…

Forget the banks.

Take a look at this … a personal online wallet: bitcoin.org

“Is it possible to change that culture?”

It’s highly unlikely that a large wayward corporation can ever reform itself for the sake of better relations with customers when it’s already so far down the bad path. It’s like dutch elm disease for a company. It actually infects its peers if leaders in the industry are not careful.

However, this is the exact sort of competitive advantage opportunity that new competitors seize upon to win market share, against the usual odds.

Why are credit unions suddenly getting attention again? Because they stayed true to their missions, they didn’t do what Citicorp did to grow and profit recklessly, and they didn’t end up in the compromised position that Citicorp is in now as a result. A good credit union can (and often does) provide a much better customer service experience than one of these large, faceless, merciless retail banks that are now desperate for cash. That’s enough of a difference to make the choice easy for new customers. (slightly better interest rates and friendlier credit offerings help, too)

I’ll bite – if the prime rate goes down, they would lower the rate? I DOUBT THAT – but if anyone really knows, I would like to know.
Second, so what is the rationale – I suppose a change in the law. But if Citi lowered as well as raised when the prime rate changed, isn’t this just a wash?

Possibly, the notices are a legal necessity. However, legal text can be written clearly for the average reader. See the Clarity website: http://www.clarity-international.net.