CONTRADICTIONS-3


 

“A 50 lakh rupee loan application gets sanctioned in a jiffy while a 50000 rupee Mudra loan takes eternity, biting contradictions!”

 Thus began a speech, dismissive of the sycophantic culture of pre-fixing one’s address with calling out a never-ending list of dignitaries on the dais, from one of the many executives from different banks who were invited for a MSME conclave to share and air their thoughts on the plight of entrepreneurs and the possible banking solutions on their financial problems. He continued:

“we thought we understood their world. We never did”

“we thought we were banker to every Indian. We are miles away from it”

“we thought we were ‘faithful-friendly’. We are nowhere near it”

“we thought we were ‘customer-centric’. If any, we are eccentric”

We say one thing on this platform and do exactly the opposite once we are back in our air-conditioned room with plush interiors! We are a bundle of contradictions. A young man, fresh from college, walks into a bank, banking on their tall promises made through print and electronic media about myriad schemes for MSME sector, with tonnes of hopes of a meaningful meeting with the banker and thereby convincing him for sanctioning a loan. What does he get? His presence is barely acknowledged. Neither is he greeted, much less smile. Nor is he offered a seat.

“a customer is the most important person. He is not an interruption in our business. He is the purpose of it”, so said Mahatma Gandhi. Now contrast this with the above response.

We short-change the customer at every opportunity. We  are neither ‘attentive’, nor ‘sensitive’ to their reasonable and genuine requests. We ask them to ‘come later’. And that ‘later’ will never arrive. We don’t value their time. To a demanding customer, we have a nightmarish check-list that will drive him away!

Add to it our bureaucratic approach of ‘passing the buck’. We have any number of ‘alibis’ for not doing it.

All this time i have been narrating negative aspects of present day banking. All is not lost. There is a saying – ‘there is light at the end of the tunnel’. And that light is “SyndicateBank”. At SyndicateBank, we have a dedicated team of human resources who are trained to be ‘humane, attentive and sensitive’ to the reasonable and genuine credit needs of enterprising entrepreneurs like you. Have ‘faith’ in our ‘faithful, friendly and forward-looking’ professional set up of ‘retail loan centre’ and ‘MSME Cell’ to provide financial solutions.

Summing it up, let me assure you that:

-          We  understand your world

-          We will be banker to every one of you

-          We will be ‘faithful, friendly’

-          We will be customer-centric

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