Unintended beneficiaries of Cobra sting: ICICI, HDFC Bank staff

The Cobrapost sting operation has brought about a relief to ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank staff.

According to a report in the Economic Times report, after the expose that proved beyond doubt that insurance is the weak link in our financial system, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank have verbally told their staff to go slow on sale of insurance products.

Both these banks had figured in the sting operations, where staff gave ideas to journalists posing as customers on how to avoid taxes and change black money into white by investing in insurance products.

[caption id=“attachment_791711” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The staff have been told not to hard sell such products until the issue is settled. Reuters[/caption]

An RBI probe into the issue had found that bank staff were also going on irregular trips mostly sponsored by insurance subsidiaries of the respective banks

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Apart from this, the central bank also found that usage of dummy PAN and identity cards of unknown NROs, unauthorised gold sales and non-compliance know your customer norms are rampant among banks.

According to today’s ET report, the staff have been told not to hard sell such products until the issue is settled. Even the weekly sales reviews have been stopped, an ICICI Bank executive has been quoted as saying in the report.

However, whether all banks are doing this is not clear.

Apart from exposing the black money prevalent in the banking system, the Cobrapost sting operation had also, intentionally or unintentionally, brought the plight of the staff into focus.

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One view was that those staff who were caught on camera were doing that as they were under pressure from their bosses to meet their sales targets.

If the sting has served to release this pressure at least to a small extent, that is good for the staff.

This in turn will also benefit the customers since they will be spared of being thrust upon them some mis-fitting insurance product.