Don’t banks get the fact that they are dealing with consumers? Real people with feelings and emotions who want to have a warm and trusting relationship with their banks? Which means an entity with a name they can embrace and feel secure about? Instead of which there is a proliferation, even an epidemic, of banks with nothing but initials, especially after all the recent mergers and consolidations.
It seems to me that they are more concerned with letting all the board members feel they are part of the new entity by ensuring that at least one of the initials in their new moniker honors their recent partners taken over – with no concern for the poor consumer whose money they are holding. How am I supposed to set of initials, especially when they don’t even bother to tell us what they stand for, let alone a warm and comforting history and back story?
My own local bank went from a great name – Yosemite Bank – to an OK name – Premier Valley Bank to its first set of initials HTLF. What the heck is that? It has already been and gone and I am still trying to figure it out or where they are based. Sounds like an internet term like the HTTPS we put in front of websites. Now they are the nameless, faceless UMB bank. I think their list of initials got too long so they dropped the D off the front as they didn’t want to be seen as DUMB, even though they are, and hiding what the MB really stands for (Merchant Bank) – hopefully in the past and not the present!
On top of that, a list of initials from a long descriptive name make the business sound like a government agency. FDIC for example and many others. Yes initials can be branded – but it takes a lot of time and money and not many of them work unless they make up a new word like SoFi, or Geico did in the insurance industry.
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