Letter of the law
I recently went to a public sector bank for some account related work. I was stumped by how behind they were in operational stuff compared to the modern digitalised ones. I was thinking by the body language of the staff they might go to any length to keep the bureaucracy as it is, instead of removing friction in banking.
The number of rules and conditions they had come up for simple operations that too making a personal visit is not understandable. Many of these rules would have come in place when there was no PAN and KYC in the banking world and the banks had to be cautious, but I think there is no incentive for them to change their ways of working because of the market share, so they go by the letter of the law. Compared to these banks, digital native banks brought the banking to my door step.
I could not resist thinking about an incident that happened during my college days. I misplaced a few sheets in my assignment due to be submitted in the afternoon, the nearest shop is 2 kms away from the university and not an easy errand unless you have a vehicle. I went to the on campus photo copier stall and requested for a few loose sheets of paper. The shop keeper said that it is against their policy to sell papers and they need it for customers who wants to take a photo copy. I was ready to pay the same cost as a photo copy for those sheets and the shop keeper kept insisting that it cannot be sold.
Frustrated, I pulled out the only blank sheet I had and asked them to photo copy the blank sheet. The look on the shop keeper’s face was priceless, finally got what I wanted and paid the price for the photocopies. Sadly I am not able to find a way to arm twist these elephantine banks.
