Page 190 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

55. Opening a Pandora's Box

Reconciliation of Branch Accounts and stunning
outcomes

It was about a year now at Hong Kong and I requested for rotation of
job from Exports Trade Finance Department to Imports Trade Finance
Department. I came to know that besides Import Trade Finance
Department, that seat had additional duties of holding one set of cash
keys with another set held by the Chief Cashier of the branch for the
purpose of safety. Also, it had the task of reconciliation of Branch
Transactions Account with Head Office due to usual routing of the
dealings with the other Indian and Foreign branches through Head Office
Account and reconciling of the branch accounts with foreign
correspondent banks.

I spoke to the Junior Manager in-charge of reconciliation of accounts
section about status of any pendency. He disclosed that there was
pendency of about 2 years in reconciliation. Without wasting time in
enquiring the reasons of this kind of inefficiency or pendency, I instructed
him to take it up on priority basis and complete the same in a time bound
manner. I started monitoring the task on weekly basis and within a period
of 6 months the reconciliation was made up to date.

Now we had to segregate un-reconciled entries into three major categories
like entries on account of transaction charges, entries with amounts up to
USD 1000 each and any amounts above USD 1000 so that the higher
amounts should be enquired into and confirmation of transactions received
on top priority. I found there were two entries of USD 120,000 and USD
5,400 those needed urgent attention. There could be an error on our part

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