Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Are the financial services companies misleading customers ?

The aggressive marketing by financial service providers despite the serious financial crisis the world saw in 2008-09 makes on the think if the banks have reallty learnt lessons from the earlier event. Here are some of the examples:

1. The bank calls a customer whose loan value is about 30 % higher than the property value(due to the massive drop in asset prives) if they would like to avail of a special offer of deferment of instalment payment of one month due to festivities.

2. The exchange houses in Dubai started a campaign when the India rupee depreciated from Rs. 12 to Rs. 12.5 against Dirham encouraging people to remit aggressively. This campaign lead to a number of indivisuals borrowing for remitting back to India. This has lead substantial loss for such remitters as the rupee further depreciated to Rs. 15. Would the regulator ever take the exchange houses to task ?

3. A self employed professional who have had no significant income for over six month receives a call from his bank for generous offer both for car loans and personal loans. What is the role of  customer intelligence analytics  department of the banks ?