Page 76 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

we would receive the report through Zonal office after they submit all
such reports there.

On getting the rectification report from the Zonal Office, I was stunned
to note that they had recommended rectification of error of excess
interest charged due to rounding off of the loan amount outstanding to
next higher thousand (instead of rounding off to next higher hundred
which was acceptable norm by bank and also the borrowers). They
reported this error in 40 of such large value loan accounts and on an
average a sum of Rs. 300 - 500/- per account was to be refunded, the
total amount refundable being around Rs. 15,000/-.

I understood that they had done that to justify their visit for revenue
audit. I reported to the Zonal Office that we only had disclosed the
deliberate error to them as we had to complete the year end closing of
accounts in time. As the objective of revenue audit was to report under-
charging the interest to check the leakage of revenue, first we thought
not to refund these small amounts to loan accounts this time and would
stop this kind of rounding off in future. On second thoughts, we realized
that we should not be seen enriching ourselves at the cost of the
borrowers, we refunded these small amounts to the related loan
accounts.

I congratulated my staff on their meticulous work. They all were very
pleased and asked me for a treat that I gave them in due course.

Insights from the episode
Good work done by employees deserves appreciation to keep them
motivated.

— z —

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