Are all banks bastards preview

Stephanie first joined the Commonwealth Banking Corporation (as it was known then) in 1967. She was sixteen years old, a virgin, did not smoke, had never travelled, had never done drugs, believed in dignity and honour, to the exclusion of all other traits, and never used profanities. All that was about to change. Some changes took a while!

Her career started in New South Wales, primarily on the lower north shore of Sydney. In the next thirty-six years, her career teetered on the brink of success and failure. Why? Because she was outspoken, sassy, loud, intelligent and did not suffer fools gladly – by her own admission.

Stephanie met misogynists; male chauvinists; sugar daddies, who had ‘casting’ couches; drunks, some of whom were managers; men who sought sexual favours for her own advancement; sycophants; fools and clowns. She also met people of great integrity and knowledge, (and willing to share it), customer service giants and some honest and honourable people.

Stephanie was threatened with ‘play the game or move on’. She played the game until, in 2003, the rules became untenable. And the rules allowed for no winners.

Foreword

I first met Stephanie Retchless when she became manager of the local branch of my bank. I was struck by the fact that not only was she a friendly smiling manager, but once she arrived, her staff changed and emulated these virtues too. They were noticeably cheerier – read, happier? - than before.

My business needs required regular meetings with my manager. Over the years, I never met Stephanie other than inside the bank, but when I married again a few years ago, she was not only invited but also sat at the top table as a close friend. How one can establish that level of friendship just over a counter or across a desk is still a matter of wonder to me, but we did.

My favourite story, which I have related to dozens of people, including other bank managers, to illustrate my idea of a first-class, problem-solving manager, involved my youngest son leaving home to work in a restaurant on Hamilton Island. At around 11 a.m. I received a call. He was in panic because all he had was an ATM withdrawal card and, as he told me, “They don't have a branch on Hammo.”

I told him to ring me back in an hour. I phoned Stephanie. Knowing there was no point in him remaining with a bank offering no access to funds on the island, she offered to withdraw the funds from his account, draw a bank cheque and, in her own time, walk across the road to another bank and persuade the manager, whom she knew personally, to open an account in my son's name on her guarantee. When Lachlan rang me an hour later, I assured him he would have funds by mid-afternoon. He did. Her performance almost certainly broke all the rules her employers expected of her, but what a hell of a performance! Older customers remember it nostalgically these days as ‘customer service’. Some say to me, “But she did that because you have this special friendship.” I tell them, “I have this special friendship because that’s what she does.”

Ask the guy who lost his wallet when he was in the Gobi desert. His own bank manager failed him, but he knew Stephanie was the manager at a different branch, so he gambled on a second ISD call from central Asia. Problem solved. That was her trademark. That’s why my account went with her wherever she was posted: Biloela to Birdsville, Coolangatta to the Cape or wherever.

In those days I used to enjoy Friday afternoon drinks at the Carindale tavern, as did several other local business people who were her clients in real estate, stationery, pharmacy and so on. Every now and again one of us had a ‘Stephanie’ story to tell. She was the unanimous choice as best customer service operator in the area.

Stephanie Retchless never believed that to increase efficiency you had to sacrifice service. Nor did she believe that the only loyalty in her office had to be to the employer and the shareholders. She set a standard of loyalty in the way she treated her staff and defended them to her own masters.

I personally place loyalty very high on the list of qualities I value in life. I give loyalty and I treasure it in others, as one does with any rare quality, especially when you have been bitten too often by the reverse. It is unfortunately a very rare quality. I am cynical about loyalty, probably because I have spent a great part of my life in and around politics and political organisations.

I was chairman of a hundred and thirty strong branch of a political party at nineteen and have experience in various roles since then, including a stint in Parliament, a longer stint on the Central Executive of a political party, and the past two and a half decades as a political lobbyist. From politics I learnt that loyalty almost always flows upwards. I also learnt, as did Stephanie in her career, that there is a corollary to that maxim. The fact that one of our bodily functions is often called ‘droppings’ is not just a mere observation of physical phenomena, it is also a law of bureaucracy because that particular commodity, even in the metaphorical sense, always falls downwards.

Sadly, in modern banking the customer is no longer at the top of the totem pole. The shareholder is, and that means the dollar is. Staff too, have been ruthlessly down-valued in the ever-increasing demand for greater productivity at less cost. Profits and share price are everything. The rule of “loyalty upward and ‘crap’ downward” has taken over.

It is no wonder the author of this book, with the value she placed upon customers and loyalty downward as well as upward, eventually fell foul of the system, or cistern, depending upon your view of the modern world of banking.

One last anecdote will illustrate both Stephanie’s commitment to problem solving and the value she places upon loyalty on the one hand and the ‘don’t care much’ attitude to even long-standing customers by the banks. For investment purposes, I recently sought an addition to my line of credit with the bank. I was rejected out of hand because I did not have a ‘regular’ income. It was age discrimination, but no one would admit it. I am sixty-three and retired. But since retiring seven years ago, my net worth (after living expenses) has increased by a satisfactory percentage every year. The bank discounted this as ‘risk’ income, crediting only conventional income, without which they were not interested in doing business with me. The fact that a rival bank offered all I wanted and more, provided I left my old bank, didn’t seem to stir them at all. I soon learnt that employees only get credit for finding new customers. Loans officers and bank managers are not much interested in satisfying the needs of long-standing, existing customers. First, it’s not their job, and second, even if they keep you with the bank, how do they prove it to their masters? There’s no change in statistics. There’s just no reward in it.

I learned from my now retired but loyal bank manager there is a special section called a ‘retention unit’. Sure enough, it was their job to hang onto old customers. Even then I had to wheedle and cajole and lie a little about what the rival bank was offering. After about six weeks I managed to win the fight to stay with the bank I had been with since I started a savings account as a kid at school. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around - them fighting to keep me? Yep. That’s what my ‘real’ bank manager said too. So once again I am indebted to her for solving yet another problem, albeit by proxy.

The bank may not miss Stephanie Retchless (or not that they are aware of, anyway) but many of her customers, and many staff who valued being valued by their boss, do. She was not necessarily one who broke the mould, but she sure broke most records for the sorts of things customers and workers at the coal face appreciate, and for that she paid a price. This book is indeed a necessary cathartic experience for her, but it will be a text book for the lay person well into the future. It is long overdue in coming and well worth the read. You can’t buy this sort of good advice in the regular marketplace.

i Colin Lamont left Australia to study at London University, was recruited by the then British Colonial Officer and trained and worked as a Detective Inspector in the Royal Hong Kong Police before being seconded to British Intelligence, Far East. He returned to Australia and did a stint in Parliament and then became a professional political lobbyist. He has also owned his own newspaper and has written several books on history. He is now retired and living on the Gold Coast.

Are all banks bastards?

Is there an answer to this question? I am certain that the average bank client would have a tale to tell about their bank or their specific banker. I am an ex-bank manager, who, after thirty-six years in the banking industry, finally left, in the main for the things that I was asked to do by my immediate superiors. I was told to do things that I believe were immoral, lacked ethics and basic human decency. This is my tale.

The culture of the banking industry was such that in 1967, when I first joined the bank, customer service was a priority and all other aspects of banking were secondary. When I left in 2003 the priority was sales. Each and every day of the week, individual staff members were asked how many sales they had made during the day. I, as the manager, was not supposed to ask how well their customer service had gone.

I could, as an individual, point out that the deregulation of the banking system contributed greatly to the change in banking philosophy. In 1990, the Commonwealth Banks Restructuring Act of 1990 was passed, paving the way for the government’s sale of its shareholding. Again in 1991, specifically on the 28^th of August, approximately 30% of the issued capital of the bank was sold to the public. On the 1 Nov 1993, a further 19% was sold.1 And finally, from 22 Jul 1996, the Australian government is no longer a shareholder. Shareholders now rule.

In the early months of 1993 the staff of the Commonwealth Bank received advice that the number of staff would be greatly reduced towards the end of the same year. This process was named Continuous Improvement Program (CIP). Queensland was ‘honoured’ with being the ‘roll-out’ state.

There were several booklets issued detailing the actions that were soon to unfold. Those actions primarily meant that the branches themselves, in terms of staffing numbers, would be severely reduced. In my particular branch, at that time, we went from a staff in excess of forty to less than ten. Good for shareholders - disastrous for morale and shattering to clients, especially the elderly who struggle to come to terms with technology.

The functions of the branch were divided into different sections with various ‘centres’ being established to handle the work that the branches had previously done individually, on a central basis. The excess staff, made available by the reduction of staff from branches, primarily staffed these centres. In one particular instance, fifteen staff exited my branch in a period of one week. There were no farewells, no farewell gifts, as often there was no time to say goodbye! More often than not, these staff were only given one or two days’ notice. Some accepted redundancies and others were transferred to other operational centres.

A lot of middle order managers were made redundant at an average age of about forty-two. Some of my lenders went to the newly created business banking centres. Operation officers went to the new ‘operations processing centre’ at Queen St, Brisbane. Documentation officers went to the newly created centralised loans processing centre, which was, from the customer’s perspective, aloof and impersonal, at Spring Hill. The branches were left, in the main, with staff that demonstrated a willingness to stay with the new form of banking. At the age of forty-two, I elected to stay. I was one of the fortunate ones; I was not pushed out the door. I was made the manager of the branch where I had previously been the assistant manager. This was September of 1993, the period I refer to as Black September. I gave it that nomenclature many years later when the full impact of CIP had been realized. It was a slow and agonising period for the staff and their clients.

An example of hierarchical culpability occurred in 1994. The branch managers in Queensland were invited to a breakfast by the then 2IC of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The reason? To apologise to the managers for how poorly the ‘roll-out’ had been conducted by the head office hierarchy. It was stated at that breakfast “we hope to have learnt by the mistakes made in Queensland so as to reduce the impact on staff and customers alike, in the rollout of other states”.

At about the same time as this apology was given, the issue of ‘years-of-service’ gold watches came to the fore. In previous years a staff member was given a gold watch for forty years’ service. Now it was for twenty-five years’ service. And get this; all staff who were made redundant were also given them. It was colloquially called ‘the suck up for the stuff up’.

The affect of Black September on customers was profound and confusing. Very little information made it into the media. As such it was left to the remaining staff to explain what was happening to our clients. Customers did not know who their branch managers were, they did not have a known lender to go to, they could not get correct, read – timely - documentation on their lending and neither could they get an immediate approval on their lending applications, because nobody was left with sufficient authority or control. The banking system was in chaos and few knowledgeable people were left to bring it out of that chaos. Trial and error became the norm. ‘Duck-shoving’ took on a new art form – if you did not know how to do it, pass it on to somebody else.

1 These statistics and dates came from a missive sent to every staff member by the CEO CBA dated 19 July 1996, titled ‘Which Bank is … Working For Your Future’.

She wishes to share with you part of herself, her innermost thoughts and feelings. This book is not an exposé of her life, but of the life she had whilst employed as a banker.

Stephanie left the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in 2003, after thirty-six years, five months and one day. At the time of her departure she was a bank manager and had been for ten years.

It is not her intent to harm anybody. But neither can she sit back and not tell it like it is - or was. She has been threatened with litigation; she is also aware that the bank/s may attempt to prevent publication of this book. This is the risk she takes. But below, and above it all, Stephanie does this for all those who have ever said to her “Do it for us, do it for all the bankers and tell it like it is.”



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