Monday, January 24, 2005

Banking Round-up

In Nigeria, Banks have turned their tellers into prostitutes, appropriately titled “relations managers.” With 89 banks in Nigeria, competition can be fierce, and many businesses have complained of harassment by "corporate prostitutes" and Women's Rights Watch Nigeria and other groups accuse some banks of "specifically mandating young, unmarried female staff to target and convince wealthy young men [that] these employers insist on skimpy outfits and unusual work hours".

In Britain, Barclays Bank staff won’t get paid on time owing to a Banking error. The wrong date was entered into the bank's computer system and as a result as many as 62,000 Barclays UK staff and another 40,000 former employees will get paid a day late.

In Uganda, a Bank now collects taxes for the URA or Uganda Revenue Authority. Look for this outsourcing model to be expanded in Kenya where bank’s already collect utility payments for KPLC and other cash-strapped bodies.

In Botswana, the Finance Minister was warned Banks about their poor service. Mr. Gaolathe said there is growing concern amongst the general public regarding long queues in banking halls, especially at peak times and also took issue with the commercial banks for focusing on the prestige market at the expense of the larger community.

Lastly, in Canada customers pay as much as 16,000 shillings in banking fees (Can$C258 a year) for current accounts at some Banks.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

great commentary! i concur that the canadian Banking fees are absurd, but to be honest i feel more of a pinch at home in Nairobi(where u are charged to close an account!)! Here the incentive is to move all banking outside of the branch, with serious levies being placed on the traditional 'lemme do it all at the bank today' types. Bila time folks like me who dwell heavily on online banking get the better end of the stick. It costs them essentially about 2 cents canadian to carry out a transanction on the web.. so it makes sense for the cost cutting institution.

bankelele said...

Actually, Kenyans can pay just as much. NIC's (very popular)MOVE account charges 800 shillings a month i.e. almost 10,000 shillings a year, and I'm sure people pay a lot more at the bigger bank's where you can be charged 500/= for withdrawing over the counter

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