Sunanda K Datta-Ray: A ride you can't bank on

For executives of MNC banks, it's all about glib salesmanship and meeting targets. Customer service comes next

A banker was once defined as someone who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining but takes it back the moment it starts to rain. Perhaps that's how it still operates at the top, as the hapless Greeks are finding out to their cost. But at our lowly individual level, I feel sorry for the young bank assistant who has been degraded into a pushy foot-in-the-door salesman. For once, our inefficiently bumbling nationalised banks are free of blame. But many young men and women who are lured by the grand names, stately buildings and august heritage of the great Western-based multinational banks operating in India are discovering their jobs depend on taking customers for a ride.
 

They are constantly out to trap the unwary. I went once to a bank in Connaught Circus with my son who was then a student in England on a visit home. They got to work on him while I was busy with the manager. They didn't tell him the product they were selling had a three-year lock-in period. They concealed the fact that a hefty 25 per cent of the total investment over three years (Rs 75,000 in the first!) would be swallowed up as commission. It wasn't the bank's product. The scheme had been launched by, let's say, Alpha Brothers, with the bank promoting it through a full-time bank employee. The next time I visited the branch and addressed some simple banking query to her, she replied she didn't work for the bank any longer. "I am with Alpha, sir!" she said proudly. Salesmanship rewarded.

There are conspicuous exceptions. The bank where I opened my first Indian account 55 years ago still gives me fine service although I closed the account many years back. Everything being computerised, they can access accounts and carry out simple instructions. They don't ask prying questions about mutual funds or try to play ducks and drakes with demat accounts. They don't press the unique virtues of their house insurance scheme or insist only their Systematic Investment Plan leads to phenomenal riches.

Everything turns nowadays on glib salesmanship. Even in my hack's profession, the most revered journalists are often not those who write most eloquently but those who boast loudest. Proof doesn't matter. No one asks if Make in India has boosted domestic manufacture or the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan removed an iota of dirt. If Narendra Modi hasn't touched a broom since he did so for the benefit of television cameras, one may ask if he has performed a yoga pranam since International Yoga Day. It's all hype, a word I dislike both because of the objectionable practice and because I didn't grow up with it. Hype wasn't in our vocabulary since the concept didn't taint our lives.

Hype fattens on greed. I wonder, therefore, if the big foreign banks give special training in conning people to personable young employees. When a nattily-dressed young man announces, "I am your wealth manager!" and hands over his crested business card, you are lulled into believing there must be some wealth tucked away somewhere. Some are styled relationship manager; others designated customer service executive. Whatever the fancy title, ask a routine banking question and they will point to phone banking, that triumph of impersonality camouflaged as cosy intimacy. A request for an interest certificate or comment about the ATM machine's manifold deficiencies (it starts speaking too soon, what it says doesn't match screen instructions, the English is unintelligible) and they indicate another city.

Three bank smarties once appeared in my flat to demand my shares in a particular company. They wanted to "activate" those shares, meaning they would sell them and gamble with my money. Profits? No guarantees of course but the market looked promising. They kept repeating that three experts, two in Mumbai and one in Singapore ("Singapore! Just think of it!"), would decide every transaction. I offered some other stock. Those aren't worth much, they said. Obviously, they had scrutinised my demat account. I thought this a breach of confidentiality. The bank didn't. One last throw of the dice, the trio's leader said, "Okay, if you won't give us stock, give us - and he named a huge sum - in cash!"

I am told all this goes on because bank executives aren't paid enough. They are set targets. Whether or not they give any service to customers, they must earn so much for the bank. I sometimes wonder if our ancestors were not better off burying their savings under the bed.