Page 214 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

and the concerned Credit Manager had to be sent to Cash Credit and Bills
Discounting Departments respectively.

I called the concerned Manager looking after this corporate account and
requested him to prepare the memo and send to respective departments
the same day as the customer's bills were pending for the last three days.

In the evening, before the closing time, the same Manager came to me
to discuss some issue. He told me, ""What you have done today by
ordering issue of a memo so fast, would not send right signals." I asked
him to elaborate. He said, "If instructions and requests of borrowers are
executed so fast, then the people around would think there was a
"consideration" behind such a speed."

I asked him out of curiosity as to how much time the credit department
usually took in executing such instructions. He told that usual time was
5-7 days. I shot back, "Something that can be done in a few hours or
within a day at the most, even looking to other lined up transactions,
why it should take a week to do?" It was very shocking revelation about
efficiency of credit department. I was disappointed with the working
practices of the branch particularly when I had seen and practiced
efficient processes cutting delays to the minimum at Hong Kong branch.

I could not restrain myself from counseling my Manager. I told him. "If
you take 5-7 day days in executing simple instructions like these, the
corporate clients would think that you want some 'consideration' and
hence you are delaying the transactions. Let us do what is right without
worrying so much about what others will think. We need to be efficient
and satisfy our customer and we are capable of doing that to retain good
customers. We should have an enabling attitude and not the disabling
one. "

I did not comprehend why some Managers do not understand that these
good corporate borrowers were the ones who repay the principal with

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