Twenty seven
years ago when I joined the banking profession, learning banking skills
consisted essentially of on-the-job training at branches which was interspersed
with class room training by in-house instructors. Apart from some very few
specialists (who virtually did not have a career in banking), recruitment in
banks for managerial positions was solely by way of selection of promising
youngsters who could be groomed for leadership roles in banking. Prior
knowledge of banking, economics, management, law or any other banking related
was considered desirable but not necessary.
As and if one
moved up the organizational hierarchy, the training and grooming followed the
same pattern of learning by doing, along with sporadic training at in-house
training centres. If you were very lucky or rather good at “managing” you could
be sent to attend courses at specialist institutes or with other organisations.
Though, in the organization where I spent my formative years there was a strong
culture of “mentoring” which was done quite informally. One picked up skills
through hearing stories and by having your work supervised by an experienced senior.
According to perceived wisdom of the times
banking was done at branches, which were in turn controlled from so called
administrative offices. So to learn “banking” one needed to know the how and to
some extent the why of processing transactions at branches. It was considered
the end all and be all of banking. Once that was learnt one could administer
branches sitting at administrative offices where the key skill was to have
general management skills along with good communication skills – which meant
ability to speak and write clear, concise, intelligible English. Over and above
this to have a successful banking career, one needed good manipulative skills
which was euphemistically known as handling things “tactfully”.
As such, learning banking boiled down to understanding
how to manually process records and transactions while the class room training
was meant to impart knowledge of why a certain procedure was done in a certain
way. One grew up as a banker with the feeling that the qualities of a “good”
banker consisted of the ability to add up a long series of figures with
accuracy, finding out mistakes in maintenance of books through a process known
as balancing, calculating interest amount through two different procedures –
the daily product method and the monthly product method - putting through trade
finance transactions, knowing how to handle sundry legal issues such as making
payment in case of monies lying in the accounts of deceased account holders
etc. Since most of the core banking skills were imparted by the clerical staff
at branches, who unfortunately lacked deeper conceptual knowledge of banking,
financial markets, or marketing, overall skill levels remained at a very low
level.
The ultimate in banking skill was being able to
reconcile something called “Clean Cash”. This was basically a manual process of
checks and balances to ensure that all entries for the day at the branch had
been put through in the correct accounts with accuracy. A good friend has very
graphically described the situation in these words; “Clean cash was a nightmare ! I remember that in most cases, very grim
faced personnel ran that corner of the office. Imagine the chagrin then that
must have accompanied the masterly bearing of these men when certain entries,
unreconciled after sheer toil and damage to a lot of head and hair, should find
a magical resolution as if by divine intervention alone, upon the production of
some missing vouchers by the corner chaiwalla !! A senior colleague,
with an inimitable sense of humour, once recounted that after a hard days
labour extending well into the night reconciling the Day Book, as he approached
his doorway in a by-lane off Calcutta’s famed university locality of Jadavpur,
the dogs rebuked him with a bark that uncannily sounded ... daybook
daybook daybook !!!!!”
Though the biggest bug bear used to be something
called balancing and small armies of experts used to be engaged in a continuing
war to balance the bank’s books. With increasing pressure of transactions on
manual systems this was inevitable. Overall, the entire “learning banking
syndrome” was geared towards managing the manual systems of accounting which
had evolved into an extremely complex, unwieldy, leaky, and ugly monster and
needed constant and close attention along with a lot of coaxing. Some
other interesting much admired skills used to be managing the inter branch
reconciliation, managing the drafts account, calculating interest using
something called monthly product and daily product etc. and, of course,
maintaining ledgers.
I came across some very sterling men, both clerks
and officers, who used to take much pride in the quality of ledgers they
maintained with all entries made in beautiful handwriting and all particulars
carried correctly from folio to folio. But such men (and women) were few and
far between and stating that the condition of most ledgers were pitiable was
quite an understatement.
After learning the skills of general
housekeeping, the more smart ones got into the law and practice of banking.
This involved being able handle some very typical situations which came up virtually
on a daily basis. Things like how to enable operations in the account of an
illiterate pardanasheen woman account holder. Banks had a policy of identifying
its illiterate account holders who could not sign on the basis of their
photographs. But what was to be done where the account holder refused to show
her face for religious or personal reasons? There were well laid down
procedures for handling such situations. And of course how to handle every conceivable
eventuality was listed in some circular instruction or the other. There were specialists,
whose only work consisted in recalling the circular in which a certain
instruction was given. These holy men, did little productive work, but deigned
to give their advise only after the mistake had been done!
Most of these skills were learnt in course of story
telling sessions which used to be virtually endless. During work, in the
canteen, at the nearby tea shop, at training centres, during after office get togethers, at the
office picnic, or during prolonged periods of late sitting while trying to
balance some obstinate ledger. Initially these story telling sessions used to get
on my nerves, but slowly I learnt to tolerate it. It was much later, that I realized
that this kind of story telling is essential for building up the culture of the
organization, but also in informally integrating people together. In other
cultures and contexts it also goes by the name of brain washing.
One also met in banks, a very few, blue eyed,
blond haired, twice born people who got into esoteric areas of banking such as
Credit, Treasury, or Forex or the ultimate – a foreign posting. But those were
not banking skills – but rather toady skills. These folks rarely, if ever,
deigned to speak or interact with lesser mortals who peopled the branches. In
fact, for them, banking used to be credit skills and only credit skills. And
credit skills was reduced to calculating the current ratio (That is another
hilarious story). The notion that credit risk existed due
to something called asymmetrical information and that the study or analysis of financial
statements was only one of the myriad ways, with numerous shortcomings, of reducing the level of asymmetry
in information, was as close to blasphemy as you could get.
Overall, since, most of the work was quite
routine and did not take too much time or skill to acquire and since bank jobs
were well paying and prestigious, most of the staff had good educational
qualifications and were otherwise intelligent people. Now these people had to
have some outlet for their intellectual energies and this was found to be in
endless discussions of the politics of transfers and postings.
With the
passage of time and the widespread use of computers, specially with the coming
of the core banking systems most of the banking skills which were so highly
prized and so painfully learnt have become obsolete. Most of my generation of
bankers, both who are doing actual banking, or teaching and mentoring the
incoming lot, therefore have a skill set which has become obsolete in the
present day context. It is unfortunate that the same situation exists in
the management schools and specialist banking teaching institutions.
