PUNE, 1 September 2006 — The nationalization of leading banks in India by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1969 was done with the perception that it would lead to better services for customers (especially the downtrodden classes), change the outlook and attitude of bank officials as well become accountable to the people of the country.
This image perhaps has not changed as might have been expected by the government as compared to other private banks like the ICICI, UTI, HDFC or foreign banks, which stand much better and ahead, provide a classier service and immediately address customers’ grievances. Even when the private banking sector has shown a rapid growth, some of the nationalized banks are still trailing far behind.
Drawing flak and ire of customers is the Pune-based Bank of Maharashtra, which claims to have the largest number of branches — the most owned by a public sector bank in Maharashtra. But what its officials forgot while making these claims, that it is also the only bank that does not have a branch in the district of Etawah, the politically important home of former defense minister and three time chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav. Nor does it have a significant presence in western Uttar Pradesh, something that may even puzzle the new chairman and managing director M.D. Mallya.
The Bank of Maharashtra’s biggest flop is the collapse of its ATM debit card service. This is the bank’s biggest failure on this front, said a banking analyst.
Customers are angry, as the cards are not provided even after several months, and worst is that the pin password given to the customers does not match, as a result customers face embarrassing moments at shopping complexes and at ATM machines.
The problem, the analyst said, was due to negligence on the part of the bank management that outsourced the job of credit cards to a foreign agency, who in turn subcontracted it to an Indian agency that did not have the manpower capacity or the system in place and thus resulting in the collapse of the service.
The bank management is now awakening to the problem after the collapse of the system and trying to put it back on rails.
What badly reflects on the Bank of Maharashtra is its empathy to heed or take prompt action when customers complain. While chairman and managing directors in the private and public sectors would be easily accessible to meet customers or readdress their grievances promptly, this is missing with the Bank of Maharashtra’s management.
They are just not accessible to the customers or the media. This attitude and arrogance is also a key factor to the decline of customers to the bank, and the managers are just not interested to control the falling image of the bank due to lack of interest and more no transparency and accountability.
The same situation is also not whatsoever different with Bank of Baroda, another nationalized bank. Though their systems in the credit and debit card has not collapsed like the Bank of Maharashtra, yet there is a big delay in their providing credit and debit cards to the customers. The bank has spent millions on refurbishing its image through global advertising, but practically their customer service is not satisfactory at all.
