28 Sep 2007 |
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| CBN, Bankers' Committee and female bankers By Reuben Abati THERE has been a lot of concern lately, about the plight of bank employees, particularly female bankers and insinuations that young ladies in the banking profession are engaged in "disguised prostitution". The Bankers Committee (the body of bank chiefs) rose from a meeting last week to declare that any female banker who is found using indecent exposure, sexual inducement or other unethical means to woo customers to a bank will be fired. The CBN has also ordered the banks to review their employment policy to make sure that "only total bankers are recruited into the system, not the half-baked, who on the strength of their body appeal end up at the marketing department". I dare say that the Bankers' Committee is hypocritical, and that the CBN should stop moralising and do its job as a regulatory agency by introducing mechanisms for checking the excesses of the banks. Who is a total banker by the way? How can "body appeal" now be a liability? There is in this concern about female bankers an element of male chauvinism. The Association of Professional Women Bankers of Nigeria (APWBN) has issued a rather irresponsible statement which misses the point completely as it tries needlessly to differentiate between "women bank workers and women bank professionals". The APBWN should be seen and heard to be protesting that the attempt to demonise all women in banking and pass them off as sex objects is an assault on their right to human dignity. Quickly, how can anyone determine whether or not a female banker is engaged in "disguised prostitution?" If there is any problem here and the nature of it ought to be properly defined, it is the banks that should be sanctioned, not female bankers who are at best victims of circumstances. Labour leaders who met recently with the banks and the Minister of Labour got close to defining the exact nature of the problem. They accused the banks of anti-labour practices, which include the undue harassment of their staff particularly those in the marketing department and the deliberate employment of young girls who are sent into the market to hunt for deposits. One of the labour leaders in a fit of hyperbole pointed out that some banks even distribute condoms to these girls, (who may not be more than 25 years old) whenever they are sent on assignments! They are told not to get married, not to have children except with the express permission of the bank; some banks it was further observed, make use of casual staff to run their branches and even those who are employed are not allowed to join unions in the industry. These are the kind of allegations that the CBN should investigate and make an example out of one or two erring banks. The Chartered Institute of Bankers should also encourage female bankers who are unduly pressurised by their employers to report such cases. It won't be enough for the Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIBN) to insist that it can only be responsible to its members and that most bankers are wayfarers who do not even belong to the profession. It is the banking profession that is being sabotaged and the CIBN ought to be concerned about this. The problem under definition became an issue with the emergence of the so-called new generation and wonder banks. In the days of the old, traditional banks, bankers in Nigeria belonged to the conservative class in society. There was greater emphasis on retail banking and intermediation in the real sector. But then the new generation banks came along with the deregulation of the banking industry by the Babangida regime. Anybody who had access to the corridors of power got a bank licence and all kinds of smart alecs and speculators ended up as owners of finance houses. With the explosion in the population of banks, competition became stiff, and the target was not really financial intermediation, but how to amass deposits from the public. Every financial house tried to outdo the other by adopting many tactics of inducement. In effect banking halls became mini disco halls and fashion houses. Bankers started riding flashy cars. Banks began to promote their business as if they were selling bean cake. Gone were the sober-looking bankers of old, looking after other people's money was no longer enough, the banker also had to look prosperous. Female bankers wore expensive gold, the bank manager became an instant celebrity. And because the banks paid good salaries compared to other sectors of the economy, a job in the banks became the first choice for many young Nigerians. But because these banks were not engaged in real banking, their owners became more interested in sourcing deposits by any means possible. Impossible targets were set for the staff in the marketing department, marketing became perhaps the most important function in the banks. They also came up with what they called relationship management. The targets that were set had more or less no limits. Once a banker met a particular limit, a higher target was set. And so the banking profession began to create a set of schizophrenics. Young men and women who went to bed thinking of deposits, dreamt deposits and woke up every day to chase deposits. Even if these helpless things were unhappy, they could not protest. With so much unemployment in the market, it became natural for banking staff to accept just any inhuman treatment that was thrown in their direction. It is quite a surprise that the CBN, the Bankers Committee and organised labour are only now just talking about this problem. Why this is the case is perhaps also understandable. When the Central Bank decided in 2003 to introduce the policy of consolidation under which the minimum capital base of the banks was raised to N25 billion, one of the selling points was that the policy would reduce the pressure on the banks to look for deposits. We were told that the marketing staff of the banks will enjoy some respite because the emergent banks will be so big, they would be able to attract good business. Yes, consolidation has produced 25 banks, but it has also released the evil of vaulting ambition among the big banks. This evil can be seen in the current obsession with capital by the 25 banks, and the cut-throat competition among them. The thing is so bad it is beginning to look like a form of madness. All of a sudden all the banks no longer want to be Nigerian banks. They want to be among the biggest banks in Africa if not the world. But even with their N25 billion capital base, they have since discovered that the smallest bank in South Africa has a lot more than that and that globally, the biggest bank in Nigeria is no more than a small branch of a bank in London. It is fashionable these days for every bank to rush to the capital market to raise money. It is also fashionable to open offshore branches and lay claim to being international. Foreign investors are also being invited to buy shares and some of the banks now like to boast about being affiliates of bigger banks in the world. When a bank makes some progress, its owners make a song and dance out of it. One bank in fact has declared a profit after tax of N26 billion. Another one has followed suit with N10 billion. The banks are busy trying to catch up with the Joneses; bank chiefs are engaged in an ego contest, their interaction is conditioned by a "My-Mercedes-is-bigger-than yours" mentality. It is the staff of these banks that are bearing the brunt. They are the ones being used to source for deposits. There is big money being thrown in the face of the public, but the quality of financial intermediation has remained low. The effect of the big balance sheets cannot be seen or felt in the economy (except perhaps those buy-now-pay-later schemes?); bank staff are being turned into terrorists of sorts. Many of the banks issuing public offers send their staff onto the streets to go and get customers "by any means". You must have seen those university graduates wearing funny T-shirts running after you and pestering you with subscription forms. You are asked to open accounts, to deposit money, to help look for other depositors. One bank asked its staff to go onto the streets to dance and entertain the public as a way of raising awareness about its public offer. If you don't know how to dance or how to solicit for deposits, you could lose your job! In some banks, everybody is asked to bring deposits, including drivers and messengers, and the MD's secretary. You don't have to be a banker, just bring money to the bank, introduce a customer. The management of the banks is also destroying family life. Bankers are made to work long hours, sometimes they close late in the evening and work on weekends. Female bankers are told categorically that they cannot have children as often as they want, and should any one of them choose to make babies instead of serving the bank, she may not be promoted at the same pace as her colleagues. One lady got a job in a bank recently, and she had only just got married. She was happy having looked for a job for three years. But the day she was supposed to assume duties, her would-be boss innocently asked if she was not yet pregnant because the bank would not be happy with that. The young girl had to tell the truth and give up the offer. Married female bankers are also often denied their full entitlement to maternity leave. Organized Labour and the Federal Government are insisting on the right of bank workers to belong to unions and to be offered proper contracts of employment. The irony is that many of the guilty banks like to talk about Corporate Social Responsibility; but they miss the point about the internal governance/employee dimension of CSR. When Nigerian bank directors talk about international standards, they are only interested in having a fat capital base; they should begin to emulate their foreign models in terms of values and best practices. The Bankers' Committee should stop blaming female bankers, they should ask one salient question: why are the banks growing fat at the expense of the lives and happiness of their staff? The banks don't seem to have enough time and patience to develop institutional and individual capacity. They are opening branches and introducing new technology without giving staff enough time and opportunity to understand the changes and uncertainties. And when things go wrong, the same staff are blamed and punished. Three phrases rule the banking world, one: deposit/target, two: warning letter or suspension and three: termination of appointment. Banks must be told to stop soliciting for deposits like beggars on the streets. I once mistook a female banker for a corporate beggar, and I was going to give the poor girl N500 to get rid of her before I saw the T-shirt she was wearing. The CBN should stop banks from sending their staff onto the streets to dance and entertain prospective shareholders. The banks must also be told to set realistic targets for their marketing staff (if they must set targets), design other performance measurement benchmarks, and concentrate more on raising the quality of their service: the surest way to build customer confidence. The present methods dehumanise and endanger the lives of staff. To minimize the error of over-generalizatiion, however, the few truly, professionally run banks should be identified and recognized accordingly by the Bankers' Committee and the CBN.
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