I often hope to erase the annoying image of a bollywood superstar humbly inviting me with folded palms to believe that privilege banking & NRI banking come first to a certain Indian bank. I happen to hold a couple of accounts with this one, so inevitably, their promises have registered over the years.
Yet a singular experience with three branches of this popular bank today brought home certain home truths about modern finance vis a vis the regular consumer. I needed to make a wire transfer to a foreign bank, a process that involves complexities that only a bank employee can solve & a process that doesnt neccesarily earn a bank revenue.
So what I really got, despite previous phone calls, was a refusal of this service in one branch, a totally lost employee trying haplessly to navigate the serpentine online processeses of an international wire transfer & finally, after a long wait at the third branch, the transfer half done & held up due to lack of functional printers!
This however, didnt stop, the designated branch manager of this wing at a rather posh locality in Mumbai, from purring & cooing all over me and my husband, so that we would do any one of the following:
1/ Open a new bank account when I still have 3 with the bank in concern.
2/ Take up a new credit card
3/ Contact him for a home loan or a car loan. Its another matter altogether that I might not have any need for a new home or a new car.
I still recall, that as a kid, I remember buxom mothers with marriageable age daughters looking for bank managers (in case the engineer or doctor are out of reach), as potentially grand son in laws. The specimen I met today truly broke the illusion. I feel morally responsible to inform all & sundry relatives against bank managers.
The chief point of course being the fact that I have been trying to work my rather challenged mind around Niall Fergusson's Ascent of Money. While my understanding of a history of finance, even though simplified, is quite damaging to my self respect, I think the author is trying to make a simple point. The current frenzy of credit creation & customer engagement by financial institutions will lead our economy downhill. And in India, downhill rarely turns uphill in any sphere of life.
Everywhere you go, hoardings blind & dazzle you, asking you to either save more tax or simply, invest. On almost every second day, atleast 3 strangely accented human beings (if indeed, the forces on the other side of the phone line are that), are hard selling credit cards in myriad forms to you. Every person remotely associated with a bank is foretelling the signifance and untamed need for loans. Every third ad on the telly or the fm radio is a bank. And each one is asking you to spend, in some twisted form or the other.
So I dont care, after today, if I sound like an alarmist or an anarchist. If a printer interferes with a genuine service my bank is supposed to give me, and I am instead being told to spend money on stuff I dont need, I think it's my moral responsibility to warn anyone who listens.
Dont listen to private banks. Dont use their finance tools until you really need to. And freeze like you are made of stone when they try to snare you with their smiles & their soft voices. They are out to get you. They are a sort of secret society. Dont give them any 'credit', if you know what I mean. Look at the Americans. They lost their homes. Dont lose your money to this secret society of credit creators, who base their word & their money on wealth that doesnt really exist.
Just dont 'bank' on their honesty.
Yet a singular experience with three branches of this popular bank today brought home certain home truths about modern finance vis a vis the regular consumer. I needed to make a wire transfer to a foreign bank, a process that involves complexities that only a bank employee can solve & a process that doesnt neccesarily earn a bank revenue.
So what I really got, despite previous phone calls, was a refusal of this service in one branch, a totally lost employee trying haplessly to navigate the serpentine online processeses of an international wire transfer & finally, after a long wait at the third branch, the transfer half done & held up due to lack of functional printers!
This however, didnt stop, the designated branch manager of this wing at a rather posh locality in Mumbai, from purring & cooing all over me and my husband, so that we would do any one of the following:
1/ Open a new bank account when I still have 3 with the bank in concern.
2/ Take up a new credit card
3/ Contact him for a home loan or a car loan. Its another matter altogether that I might not have any need for a new home or a new car.
I still recall, that as a kid, I remember buxom mothers with marriageable age daughters looking for bank managers (in case the engineer or doctor are out of reach), as potentially grand son in laws. The specimen I met today truly broke the illusion. I feel morally responsible to inform all & sundry relatives against bank managers.
The chief point of course being the fact that I have been trying to work my rather challenged mind around Niall Fergusson's Ascent of Money. While my understanding of a history of finance, even though simplified, is quite damaging to my self respect, I think the author is trying to make a simple point. The current frenzy of credit creation & customer engagement by financial institutions will lead our economy downhill. And in India, downhill rarely turns uphill in any sphere of life.
Everywhere you go, hoardings blind & dazzle you, asking you to either save more tax or simply, invest. On almost every second day, atleast 3 strangely accented human beings (if indeed, the forces on the other side of the phone line are that), are hard selling credit cards in myriad forms to you. Every person remotely associated with a bank is foretelling the signifance and untamed need for loans. Every third ad on the telly or the fm radio is a bank. And each one is asking you to spend, in some twisted form or the other.
So I dont care, after today, if I sound like an alarmist or an anarchist. If a printer interferes with a genuine service my bank is supposed to give me, and I am instead being told to spend money on stuff I dont need, I think it's my moral responsibility to warn anyone who listens.
Dont listen to private banks. Dont use their finance tools until you really need to. And freeze like you are made of stone when they try to snare you with their smiles & their soft voices. They are out to get you. They are a sort of secret society. Dont give them any 'credit', if you know what I mean. Look at the Americans. They lost their homes. Dont lose your money to this secret society of credit creators, who base their word & their money on wealth that doesnt really exist.
Just dont 'bank' on their honesty.
Comments
Post a Comment