Taking the public’s outrage at the financial crisis in the face, bank officials are paying a high price for the mess created by their masters
THINK “bank official” and you imagine fat cats getting the cream, rewarded with six-digit salaries and huge pensions by the toxic banks they helped create. But there’s another story being told by many of the 45,000 low and middle-ranking bank workers in local bank branches, who are just as angry as the public is.
After a decade when they were trained to say “yes” over the phone to 100 per cent mortgages, overdrafts on request and astronomical credit card limits, bank officials are being commanded to say “no” by their head offices. Long-term customers who thought they had trusted relationships with local bank managers are losing homes and businesses as their requests for loans are denied.
“There’s a general climate of justifiable outrage. Customers are venting at frontline staff rather than at the senior people responsible for the banking crisis,” says Seamus Sheils, communications manager with IBOA, a union representing workers in AIB, Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank. The people working in your local branch feel like “the meat in the sandwich,” he says.
Bank officials on starting salaries of €20,000 endure verbal and, in rare cases, physical abuse from customers as they implement policy not of their making, he says. Older branch staff, such as IBOA representative Dave Keane of Bank of Ireland, New Ross, Co Wexford, say they knew that turning bank branches in to retail outlets pushing financial products that people couldn’t really afford was bound to end in tears.
The term “bank official” applies to 22-year-olds on contract as much as to branch managers earning €45,000 to €75,000 per year in pensionable jobs. These officials implement bank policy face-to-face in bank lobbies and cannot question orders from head office. Some are so poorly paid that they claim family income supplement, but this doesn’t fit the image the public has of bankers.
“I know staff who get physically sick on Sunday night at the thought of going back to work on Monday morning,” says Keane.
An official with Ulster Bank became so distressed by having to constantly say “no” at the counter to customers with compelling hard-luck stories that she reached in to her own personal account to help, resulting in disciplinary action by the bank.
Saying “no” is particularly difficult in small towns, where branch bank officials know customers and their families socially, says Tommy Kennedy, IBOA representative based in Ulster Bank, Donnybrook, Dublin.
Bank branch officials have been physically assaulted by angry customers in Cork. In Donegal, branch bank officials have wondered whether they were responsible for the suicide of a young father whose loan was refused.
“Some young staff can’t cope. There are a lot of people in very, very distressed states coming in to the bank. When staff see in the local paper that a customer they turned down has committed suicide, they don’t know if there was direct cause and effect, but they suspect,” says Kennedy.
The stress has taken its toll. “You spend most of your time dealing with distressed and angry customers in difficulty,” says Colm Quinlan of financial workers union Unite, which represents staff at Halifax and Permanent TSB among others.
In a Dublin bank last week, a customer grew irritated and increasingly shrill as she castigated staff. The branch manager patiently talked her down. Afterwards, the manager confided that such incidents are on the decrease since their peak in 2008-2009 because “there are so few customers left”.
Bank managers were once considered pillars of the community, along with teachers, solicitors and parish priests. “Two years ago there was job security, pay progression and a guaranteed pension, plus respect in the community. Now jobs are being undermined, there is no pay progression, and the expectation is that pensions will be inadequate because there is not enough in the funds. You are dealing with very angry customers, or you fear you may get a photo on your mobile phone of a gun pointed to your partner’s head,” says Quinlan.
The IBOA cites the case of a bank official who disappeared overnight from a local branch without explanation to colleagues. The official had been discovered to be under surveillance by a criminal gang. The fear of tiger kidnappings means branch bank officials being advised to alter their family routines and routes, such as when dropping and collecting children at crèches and schools. One tiger kidnapping victim was so traumatised that he could not return to work.
After two years, he took a “group transformation package” of €16,675 because, he says, he was given a verbal assurance that, if he wanted to return to a bank job, there would be a place for him. Seven years after the incident, when the victim felt ready to return, senior management said that rehiring him “wouldn’t be prudent”, he says. This tiger kidnapping couple are out of work, living in rented accommodation and feeling “betrayed” by the bank.
The case illustrates how some bank officials, according to their unions, feel as disappointed and angry at head office senior management as the public feel about banks in general. Keane says: “We are all set up as ‘bankers’ and we are all tarred with the same brush because we are an easy target. Bank workers are under the same financial pressures – job losses, uncertainty behind the scenes – yet the public don’t see us like that.”
In the good times, bank officials had the support of customers, says Claire Walsh, a union representative based in AIB, Longford. “That’s gone by the wayside now. Staff are fair game for abuse. The public don’t see a difference between people on the frontline and those who made the decisions,” she says.
In the past 18 months, 5,000 bank officials have lost their jobs, though some of this has been due to “natural wastage”, discontinued short-term contracts and early retirement packages. The IBOA anticipates a further 5,000 jobs going before the banking crisis ends.
Kennedy believes that banks have become a “frightened culture” in which workers dare not challenge policy. For example, a local branch manager may know from previous experience that a long-time customer who needs to borrow to keep his business going will pay it back, but the computer at head office has the final word.
Says Keane: “I trained as a lender and used credit scoring – now the machine makes the decision. Sitting down with customers and listening to their problems and managing them out of it is a human skill that is no longer respected. The trust between the local bank branch and the customer has been broken.”
Typical salary figures
STARTING GRADE
€21,500 minimum
AFTER 15 YEARS
€38,500
OFFICER GRADE
€34,250 (min) – €55,000 (max)
ASSISTANT MANAGER
€44,500 (min) – €65,000 (max)
BRANCH MANAGER
€50,000 – €80,000 (depending on size of Branch)
- Performance-related pay could produce additional payments of 5-10 per cent assuming targets are met. Since the downturn, targets are increasingly unlikely to be met for many bank officials.
- Most bank officials in the Republic are earning between €21,500 and €45,000.
- Typical pension contribution is 5 per cent of salary. Majority of staff, employed 20 years, are on a defined benefit scheme. Recently recruited staff, employed ten years, are more likely to be on a hybrid defined benefit/defined contribution scheme.
