Banking's "Sales Culture" Goes Global

For most of the 20th century, bank employees served their customers. In the 21st century, they're required to sell stuff. The change can be hazardous to a customer's financial health, even in Malaysia, as Quah Seng-Sun reports in this post on his blog:

Everyone that works in the banking industry today knows that selling their products is very much part of their job. Such is the competition for business among banks that the staff knows no boundaries for the sake of closing a sale, finalising a deal or pushing a product.

There is little care whether the sale, deal or push will actually benefit the customer. As long as there is a transaction that benefits the bank’s bottom line, the bank will want to push it through because ultimately, that’s the pressure on the staff. Many old bank staff feels uncomfortable with this role - they feel that they are betraying the customers that they are so familiar with - but to new bank staff, it is second nature to them that they are bank salesmen. They know of no other alternative.

I met an elderly couple this evening. Both are in their mid-seventies. They knew that I have an active interest in financial planning - investments and estate planning - so they asked me to look at the copies of two application forms in their hands. They were illiterate and wanted an explanation of the two forms.

I was surprised. The forms turned out to be applications for some unit trust funds. One was a third-party global infrastructure fund marketed by Maybank while the other was a Euro equity fund from Public Mutual.

I was surprised because all that the elderly couple had done at the branches of these two banks was to ask the bank staff for alternatives to their maturing fixed deposits.