Bank staffer reveals devious tactics: “Makes me feel a bit grubby”
A former Commonwealth Bank staffer has lifted the lid on some of the devious tactics employed by major banks to prey upon customers in a 60 Minutes interview.
News.com.au reports the whistleblower indicated staff were under intense pressure to move products, selling to customers who couldn’t even afford them.
The former staff, named in the interview as Catherine, said the bank had shifted focus from the customer’s wellbeing to pushing products.
“Every customer that goes through the door, every customer that you serve, you are expected to see what products they have with you,” Catherine said.
“You get to the stage where you see them come through the door and you think, ‘Oh, what am I going to get out of this customer?’
“It makes me feel a little bit grubby. It’s like we’ve all been tainted with this really bad taste. It’s taken away the integrity.”
Staff were reportedly under intense pressure to sell products.
“A manager may get told, ‘You need to have 20 home loans a week’,” she said.
“Well, that means if you’ve got five staff, those five staff need to get four home loans each for the week. And so, Thursday comes around. If you haven’t got them … Friday can become a really, really hard day.
“There’s some really ruthless staff that will get customers to increase credit cards, or do stuff. On paper they [the customers] may be able to afford it, but in reality you know that perhaps they can’t.”
Julia Angrisano, the national secretary of the Finance Sector Union, said banks were forcing workers to perform in a manner that was making many feel “uncomfortbale”.
“It was not uncommon for our members to tell us that their managers would expect them to peer over the counter and have a look inside the customer’s wallet as they’d open up to have a look whether or not perhaps that customer had a credit card from one of its competitors,” she said.
“We have many, many instances of members who tell us that they are so stressed before they go to work that they have to psych themselves up, and they’re in their cars, crying, knowing what’s about to happen when they walk through the door.”
Katherine Temple, a lawyer from the Consumer Action Law Centre in Melbourne, told 60 Minutes the pattern of behaviour from the banks was “scary”.
“A lot of people were in a lot of distress because they’re loaded up with debt that they can’t afford, and a lot of the times they never could afford,” she said
“They are the ones who tend to pay the most interest, in late fees, in charges,” she said.
“So there is an incentive there, I think, to provide loans to people who are living on the edge.”
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