Mere technology and ambience upgrade are not enough

August 31, 2022
Devinder Dhingra

Satyam (The Truth)

Recently I received a letter from a public sector bank for a KYC update. The letter carried a date of April, 2022, seems to have been posted in July and I received it in the last week of July; thank God the postal department did not delay their job.

Anyway, better late than never. I visited the nearest branch of the bank the next day with all the required documents; the front-desk representative there guided me to meet the service manager. Not an issue. I went to the service manager, who asked me to visit the home branch the moment he came to know that my account was not in his branch. “Why?” I asked, and showed him the letter in which it was clearly written that I could visit any branch, but he did not listen.

I don’t give up that easily. I straightaway went to the chief manager and made that guy attend to me finally.

My originals were verified, after which I was asked to submit the form along with the required photocopies to a front-desk representative. I did the same and asked the representative to provide me with acknowledgement and let me go. The guy refused to give me acknowledgement and told me I needed to wait if I wanted an acknowledgement. Why? Only the bank would be knowing.

Anyway, I chose to wait; who shall trust them when they weren’t willing to provide a service in the first place?

The front-desk guy attempted his best to delay the service to me but finally after fifteen minutes it was my turn. He made some computer entries and told me it was done and I would have received an SMS regarding the same. I had not received any SMS by then, so asked him to give me the acknowledgement instead. He again refused to do so and asked me to take the acknowledgement from the service manager. Why? Only the bank would be knowing.

Meanwhile, I received an SMS which conveyed something like ‘we have received your KYC update request, please submit the form ….”.

Wow! The form had already been submitted. What do they mean by submission then? It just shows lack of accountability; isn’t it?

Anyway, I went to the service manager again. After another ten minutes, he told me that the acknowledgement would be given by the Chief Manager. I argued and made him give me acknowledgement somehow. But here, in this case, he was right. The acknowledgement form was supposed to be signed by the Chief Manager. Strange but true! (see the copy below)

The last leg in their KYC update process would be the approval of the Chief Manager. That’s okay but why should a customer be concerned about it? What does the bank want? Do they want a customer to submit a form and then wait till evening, when (and if) the Chief Manager would approve the update request, to just get the acknowledgement?

Where is the accountability? An acknowledgement is merely a receipt that someone has submitted the form and the required documents. Why can’t the front-representative do it?

A job that could have been finished in five minutes took me more than an hour and some unnecessary heated exchanges.

On my way back, I was looking at their computers and air-conditioned ambience. My mind travelled twenty years back; they had fans then, and some small old tables. They have certainly modified them in terms of technology and working environment since then. But what about accountability? When will they upgrade themselves in processes and psyche?

A mere technological and ambience upgrade cannot make them efficient and competitive in today’s world. Isn’t it?

Shivam (The Solution)

1. RBI should make it mandatory for all financial institutions to include an acknowledgement section in all the forms that are needed for any banking transactions.

2. RBI should also make it mandatory that the acknowledgement should be given at the time when the form has been submitted and any representative of the bank who receives the form should be authorised to give the acknowledgement after the basic verification process has been completed.

3. Banks should keep on reviewing their processes from time to time and should discard the ones that have become outdated. And most importantly, accountability has to be integrated within any process.

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