Before we barrage our banks to death

I went online to see what I could find, and realized that what the CBN was trying to do, was initiate a scenario where banks will have ‘loyalty’ programs. It’s just like going to a supermarket and being issued a loyalty card that entitles one to 5% discount for repeat purchases.
I also explained to her during the interview that I believe that MOST banks do not set about trying to cheat customers, but that a lot of the refunds may be due to operational errors made on the shop floor. Well, I recall working in a bank where in those days, some of the more philistinic bosses would ask that you ‘charge the customer maximally’. But over time, especially in the last few years under Sanusi, everybody became super careful. Errors still occur, but the age of exuberance is gone. Banks have been made to adopt the best in corporate governance, their fees have been cut, COT is to disappear fully by 2016, there is even this new drive for them to embrace Sustainable Practices, meaning that their annual reports must be presented from even a broader Stakeholder perspective.  The CBN wants to know if all their practices are sustainable. How have they engaged with the environment?  What about their staff?  What about Corporate Social Responsibility? And so on.
One of the more radical changes in the last few years, is the advent of e-Banking, which brought about a lot of transparency.  Since bank customers have immediate and direct access to their accounts from the comfort of their offices or mobile phones, they are able to contest transactions quickly and more often. The banks are feeling the heat. Naturally, everything comes down on top of the banks. They are fair game. Not only in Nigeria but all over the world.
These days, I am always saddened when I go into any banking hall in Nigeria. The environment is often depressing. Maybe it’s that desperate look on the faces of the staff, that tells you they’ve been barraged and insulted this morning, threatened that they could be sacked at any moment. The culture has always been that the board asks the MD to perform the impossible; all they are interested in is the huge profits. The MD equally unleashes terror on his EDs and GMs. It’s like nuclear energy. You know, the atomic bomb. It starts small, but by the time it rolls down the rank and file, it picks up velocity, meanness and destructive capability.  This culture is what drives many a ‘bank worker’ to hate the system so much, they too start thinking of defrauding the banks. By the time the hateful energy reaches the guy on the shop floor, he just can’t take it anymore, driving him to make mistakes, apart from taking his dignity away.
The marketing guys bear the brunt. These days, many banks have employed marketers based strictly on commission. Some earn just N30,000 a month, if they don’t manage to open new accounts. I see them sometimes trekking long distances after leaving my office.  Banking is far from what it used to be. In my first exposure to being a relationship officer, in 1997, I was allocated about 14 accounts, and told to grow the business on them. I was given a bit of pressure to open new good relationships. But today, the management of banks no longer care about relationships. They give instructions to their staff to go open 10,000 accounts each. Let me give them a feedback right here right now; it is damaging to your business, to the psychology of your staff, to how we the customers view you, and to the banking profession at large. It just does not make sense. How on earth is anyone going to manage 10,000 accounts? Not even 1,000. Not even 100.
What happened to banking? Most of the problem came from the executives, past and present. Nigerian banks are commercial banks. But they want to live like the investment banks of Canary Wharf or Wall Street. Only better. They want to earn – at the top levels – better than those guys. They can even do personal deals that the Wall Street bankers would get jailed for. Some get courted by the government, given awards and appointed into all sorts of committees. This creates antagonism between the banks and the customers.
Unfortunately, it is the rank and file who suffers. In the days when the current executives were climbing the ladder, they knew they had a career. But today, careers are finished. What you get when you walk into a banking hall, apart from empty cubicles where they had planned to have human beings dispensing cash until e-Banking came along, are those sad eyes that I hate to look into. It’s not as if it’s easy for those of us outside, but it depresses one to see those faces, and oftentimes, to be told by them in hushed tones just how desperate things are, as they slip their CVs into your palms or obtain your email for the same purpose.
And then we all form the mob and rain down on the banks.  Every customer is sure that they are overcharging his/her account even if there is no evidence, or even when the account had no money inside.  No one wants N1.00 to be taken as charges for anything. When I see the fees they take for sundry services, I wonder how the banks will survive.  As standard businesses, with loads of staff to pay, you have to generate some good income. Nigerians say the banks should face their core business of lending. But we forget that even we Nigerians are very bad debtors. See what we had to move to AMCON, bailouts for many of our big men, many of whom hold national awards! The nation as a whole had to pay.  For normal customers, 70% – 80% of the loans go bad. You give a loan and the man decides to re-bury his grandmother who died 25 years ago!  He pays tithes of 10% of the loan to his church because his pastor is breathing down his neck.
But I urge that we have a rethink about the way we have been raining down on our banks. Their businesses are shrinking.  It’s the apparent failure of the current banking business model. Certainly, the executives have to reduce their expectations.  They probably have to earn less because the current cash flows will not sustain the expectations of the past. But those at the lower echelon need protection by the regulators and the rest of us. They need a proper return to the days when they could be happy that they have careers.
I hope the banks find their mojos back. A lot of them are just marking time. The days of innocence are gone. Even we the people will not be happy with the picture when it all comes tumbling down.  It’s also about the disappearance of the middle class. The only ‘safe’ industry in Nigeria is oil and gas, but now with crude oil prices crashing no one knows what next (more on crude oil crash next week). Telecoms has shaken out too; is still shaking out. Let’s have some mercy for our banks and bankers please. Believe it or not, they need it.