Contributed by Anthony Hobrow
Banking in Singapore leaves me frustrated at every turn. I am not sure how much is the fault of the bank and how much is detailed regulation by MAS but the end result is a system where there appears to be no authority granted to the front line, excessive paperwork and very long process times. It is not the same in London.
With the same international bank I can get an overdraft facility in one short phone call. Here it has taken paperwork and two weeks! I even had to provide copy payslips when the bank has access to every receipt and payment in my account in UK and in Singapore and has access to 40 years of my banking history!! What possible purpose can a payslip serve?
I needed a new credit card as my card failed sometimes to work when I was travelling. In UK this would have been couriered next day to wherever I was. Singapore could not send me a new card. I had to be with a faulty card until the end of my trip and then collect a new one when I got back. BUT the worst thing was they cancelled my old card and took the account off the internet banking facility, before I had the new one! The card was not lost or stolen, just worn and intermittently didn’t swipe well.
Anthony Hobrow
Direct Asia
Banking in Singapore leaves me frustrated at every turn. I am not sure how much is the fault of the bank and how much is detailed regulation by MAS but the end result is a system where there appears to be no authority granted to the front line, excessive paperwork and very long process times. It is not the same in London.
With the same international bank I can get an overdraft facility in one short phone call. Here it has taken paperwork and two weeks! I even had to provide copy payslips when the bank has access to every receipt and payment in my account in UK and in Singapore and has access to 40 years of my banking history!! What possible purpose can a payslip serve?
I needed a new credit card as my card failed sometimes to work when I was travelling. In UK this would have been couriered next day to wherever I was. Singapore could not send me a new card. I had to be with a faulty card until the end of my trip and then collect a new one when I got back. BUT the worst thing was they cancelled my old card and took the account off the internet banking facility, before I had the new one! The card was not lost or stolen, just worn and intermittently didn’t swipe well.
Anthony Hobrow
Direct Asia
6 comments:
Mr. Hobrow shared his views with me at a recent meeting. I asked him to send his story to post in my blog. It supports my views that we need to depend less on bureacracy and rely more on trust and judgement. Some of my blog readers are conditioned by the Singapore bureaucratic mindset and does not know that there is a different approach that is adopted in London and elsewhere.
I totally agreed with Mr Hobrow about our local banks. Of late, I do detect some improvements.
In UK they practise empowerment. In Singapore we talk empowerment but we practise Cover Your Ass.
It's in our DNA becoz over here it's you die your business. When you don't have pro-employee laws, no Singaporean-first laws, no unemployment benefits, no disability benefits, no old age pensions, you do whatever it takes to preserve yourself first, even if means being robotic and stupid to customers.
Remember the old IT saying? Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. In Singapore the employee mantra is nobody gets fired for following company policy to the letter, no matter how idiotic. Don't ask, just follow, just do.
Dun agree with TKL here. We are not bureaucratic conditioned, we are kiasu. Why? Very simple, we have no consumer protection here whatsoever, so we have to protect ourselves.
LKY said you have to open your eyes big big when you invest, and that applies to any official document and banking activities too.
We just dun trust the banking system here nor of the Govt regulations.
Who cares about bureaucratic procedures if we could help it, and if something goes wrong, the bank, the Govt and its Judiciary would say we deserve it, because we dun take precautions for self protection.
Reply to yuyuan
Please put your reply in a positive way. Actually, you are agreeing with me - that the current situation is unsatisfactory. Whether it is due to bureaucracy or kiasi is a matter of interpretation - as bureaucracy helps to protect the kiasi.
One mindset of Singaporeans is to be negative, when they can be positive - to point out where they disagree, when they are actually agreeing with the main thrust. I like to use this example to point out what is "being positive".
In many cultures, the approach is to be helpful and to simplify procedures, while keeping to the essential regulations that must be complied with.
In Singapore, the usual approach is to stick to regulations rigidly and blindly, even when there is no purpose in doing so. Worse, many people over-apply the regulations and make things more difficult than originally envisaged.
We need to have a new approach, a new mindset.
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