I FIND it chilling that banks have drawn up secret plans to share more information about customers.
But it is part of a growing trend by companies to abandon their public-service role and target only the clients who will make them the most money.
It is in line with news that Egg, the credit card owned by Citibank of the US, is withdrawing the card from customers who do not use it often enough, or do not pay its typical penal 16.9% borrowing rate. This is entirely different from clearing out dormant accounts: these customers are simply not making Egg enough money.
Shareholders in consumer businesses may retort that they have no public-service role. But once a company reaches a certain size - think Tesco, where as a nation we spend £1 in every £8 - it cannot expect just to take the money and run. That is why supermarkets, like pubs, have been subjected to so many official inquiries.
Banks, too, have duties. No prime minister can let any of the big five go bust, because it would shatter confidence even more than did the queues outside Northern Rock last September (doesn't that seem a long time ago?). And, as I wrote last week, the Treasury is proposing to make banks a legally protected species.
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So it ill becomes the banks to pick over one another's customer lists to see who should be blacklisted and who should be sent one of those oily mailshots selling some unnecessary but highly profitable service.
Indeed, such get-togethers sound remarkably like the anticompetitive agreements that were prohibited under the Competition Act of 1998.
On the whole, banks are no longer interested in long-term relationships with clients through good times and bad. If you are not contributing to profits today, thank you and good night.
Such attitudes shine through the ludicrous savings accounts pioneered by Lloyds TSB, which pay a tempting interest rate for the first £1,000 or so, then next to nothing beyond that. It doesn't encourage serious saving, merely offers as little as the bank can get away with.
The latest version of this wheeze is HSBC's revamp of its Bank Account Plus. For a year the first £1,000 saved earns 8%, it's slashed to 2.5% from £1,001 to £2,500 then to 0.1% if you are stupid enough to lend it any more.
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So you would collect £80 less income tax on £1,000, £105 on £2,000 and £155 on £52,000. Except you wouldn't, because there is a £155.40 annual fee so you would actually be out of pocket.
HSBC's gimmick is that the account charges the same 8% on overdrafts - but again only for the first £1,000, then it jumps to a savage 16.1%. So to borrow £1,000 for a year you would pay £80 plus £155.40, which adds up to £235.40 or 23.54%, and on £2,000 your total cost would be £396.40 or 19.82%.
As the revamp was unveiled before the Bank of England rate cut, it should be paying and charging 7.75%, but that would spoil the advertising line - good for savers, tough on borrowers.
Yet Mike Oliver, the hapless HSBC suit credited with this shambles, has the cheek to say "it makes life simpler and is terrific value for money".
The fee also covers preferential rates on mortgages, loans, savings and insurance, identity theft assistance, discounts on travel and leisure spending and free travel insurance - subject to preexisting illnesses and being under 70 years old.
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If you don't use those offers, you might as well set light to £10 notes. I'd rather have a straightforward bank account and then shop around for the add-ons.
Pop investment
THE latest attempt to make money out of showbiz is the Power Amp Music Fund, which is trying to raise £10m under a tax-sheltered enterprise investment scheme.
The idea is to invest in 20 to 30 artists, ranging from promising beginners to established names. The only one signed so far is Mancini, described by DJ Eddy Temple-Morris on XFM as "a moody electro-lounge rock 'n' roll band like Primal Scream in bed with Debbie Harry at Massive Attack's house." Hmm.
Power Amp's talent scouts are Jazz Summers and Tim Parry, who claim to have "masterminded the success" of The Verve, Snow Patrol and Badly Drawn Boy.
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Much hangs on Summers and Parry finding more hits and not keeping too many goodies for themselves. The crucial relationship will be between them and Tom Bywater, the former private banker whose idea this is, but it is not clear who has the ultimate power of veto.
I'd like to have seen a stronger investment manager with real clout. A guaranteed quota of gig tickets for investors would also sweeten the inevitable early losses on what could be a fun gamble.
First aid
ABBEY, the Spanish bank that likes to ask the weirdest questions, has found that parents lavish more money on their firstborn's first home than those of younger children.
Most puzzling of all is that only children - like me - do no better than the second eldest. But when they are born, only children are also the firstborn, so why do they come off second-best?
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I know some parents decide from the start to have just one child, but then they know they can devote all their spare cash to their only offspring. But still they don't.
I always knew I should have had a younger brother or sister, but mum and dad wouldn't listen.