Right photo: Credit cards. Source: www.theguardian.com
A large number of law firms and collection agencies all over the country have benefited up to 45% commissions share for recovering long lost debts for credit card companies and banks.
The question is, when all over the world especially in the US Army, people start shying away from using credit cards because it buries one in serious perpetuating debt burdens, more if you are not scion or heir to the tycoons in Forbes’ List, Philippine banks are obsessed with selling that product: the plastic money.
And 99% of members of the Bankers’ Association of the Philippines are racing against each other in selling insurance and pension plans without letting the enterpreneur class to succeed. ( Please see source article here. )
In a world where there is no plus side to very small revenue or cash accumulation, bankers are inclined to accommodate rich clientele and Alvin Toffler’s dark characters who form the other side of the coin of that phenomenon in modern times that he calls rapid wealth creation: criminals, underworld, terrorists, drug kingpins and the like.
Extraordinary is a bank manager from Antipolo who declares, “from our subsidiary bank, if you have a transaction to settle with our mother bank, I can endorse you all the way so they will provide you all the assistance you need.” In the case of a bank manager of a large bank at V.A. Rufino St., Makati City, the lady manager says it is impossible to endorse a transaction or provide suggestion to the manager of another branch of the same bank. This Makati bank branch manager wants that all transactions must emanate only from her branch.
What will keep a bank manager from endorsing a client? And what will prevent the bank manager from Antipolo to continue to give positive, constructive aid to clients in linking up with other branches of his bank?
The manager from Antipolo is the epitome of the banker’s public service ethic. The manager from V.A. Rufino in Makati is distinctly the portrait of the imbecile banker.
More than 70% to 80% of bankers in the Philippines suffer from a dearth of knowledge and are extremely poor in intelligence as well as wanting in intellect. No one is to blame except their headquarters office and the kind of education bankers get from the Philippine educational system that cannot afford to teach the correct nuances and shades of meaning of banking jargon.
On the part of bank headquarters, the governing policy of their banking corporations are bereft of the desire to promote broader credit to the entrepreneur population. The hard and fast rules of KYC – Know Your Customer, is extremely distorted and warped so much so that even knowing the potential depositors are thieves, murderers, drug lords, gambling lords, possibly as well terrorists fronted for by their relatives and associates, the bank manager will happily endorse the opening of banking relationship with the criminal and proceed to service that enemy of the public.
Effectively, this makes banks Public Enemy, by association, as launderers of the funds of these members of the underworld.
Indeed, the benefit of the bank accepting as much cash and other valuables from these shady characters is tremendous, at least there should be balancing acts on the part of bank management to add a redeeming value to their inclination to accommodate and protect criminal figures.
Compounding the situation of refusal to give away assistance to clients, is the inability of bankers to fulfill their ultimate obligation to service the customer. In many foreign-to-local transactions, if the scheme utilized is new to the Philippine banker, the transaction becomes bogged down not be the absence of interest of the banker but by the lack of fingertip knowledge and second nature skill to attend to the needs of the client.
Ultimately, meaningful change should happen in the banking industry. While it is all right to keep taking deposits from and giving away loans to the likes of billionaires like Sy, Ayala, Tan, Gokongwei, among others, taking the deposits of criminals needs to be done with a conscience. And plowing back dirty money as in the case of major public funds thief like Edwin Gardiola, as loans to the Gardiola shell companies and the conglomerates of his protectors, is a mortal sin. Dirty money for big loans, while at the other side of the equation nothing is for the honest or the least criminally inclined small and medium scale entrepreneurs.