The Course So Far

Today, one of our coursemates, Michelle, who had been with us from day one of training is done with her training program and will not be coming back for more fun and games. Off to branch she goes and we'll all miss her. Being as friendly as we all are, it's no wonder how we've gotten along so well. Guess that's why we're in the line of sales i guess.


L to R: Vincent, Me, Leng, Zeon, Michelle, Gerald and Isaac Several more of us and you can see who we are in my phlog.

Sometimes, i think i really laugh too loud and you know that's the case when everyone around you, including the facilitator who had been speaking a moment ago, all go quiet and stare at you in a mixture of disbelief (cos they can't believe someone could be so rude and out of control) and disbelief (again! cos they can't believe that someone looks like he's 30 already). Good thing all our facilitators are pretty easygoing and patient. That has helped tremendously in helping us understand some of the more tedious things we've had to learn. (Cue credit card systems, retail loan systems... yada yada systems).

While it has been great fun, we've also learnt heaps in the 2.5 weeks we've been dragging ourselves out of bed early in the morning. From getting broad overviews of the banking industry to our banks products, it has all been pretty interesting. However, the most exciting bit so far has been learning the information systems we're to eventually become proficient at. CCMS, RLS, HOGAN... imagine trying to remember about 15 codes for each and what those codes do.. try this on for size... 11.17, 11.62, pcih, pcik, pcss, 112, 122, 802... you get the idea. All isn't lost and it is really possible, i mean the guys at direct banking handle this stuff day in day out for weeks on end anyway. Take Vincent, he's able to friggin give you the right code for whatever information you want at the drop of a hat!

Speaking of Vincent, it's a small small world (or maybe just Singapore and it's serfs' orbits). Vincent and i were from the same uni and same course more or less, yet we never met one another. Same uni in NUS? no biggie... NOPE, UWA... in Perth... still no big deal. Well how about our exam schedular, Gillian, also being from there? And then we have Zeon's BF whose twin brother Leng knows really well. And how Melvin used to stay in one of the halls in NUS and knew common friends of Leng and Zeon? Ah, here's one more, how about Zeon's bf being dragonboat coach for someone else we all know? Sheesh... the list is endless. Oh, my gf knows Gerald's gf too. Ok man, a rag is bad enough, don't wanna become a gossip rag.

Seeing as how today is the 20th (PAYDAY!!) we left our frugal selves in the lab and had lunch at Coffee Club. Mr healthy food Gerald had a salad for lunch!?! While I, sugar-overloaded hyperactive kiddie, had a muddie mudpie :) The others; boring stuff like fish and chips, pasta, calamari and soft shell crabs with wasabi. Well, the fish and chips did look good but after the muddie mudpie, i was just too full to put anything else in.

After work, Leng (Bala Permanent Resident) and some of em headed off to Bala while, a couple of us headed off to Plaza Sing. Sounding really soppy and shit but a parting of ways, how sad. BUT this is friggin Singapore man, we're more likely than not to walk right smack into one another again. Failing that, we have email and pop-song tune mobiles to keep us in touch.

Sigh...more banking software/info systems tomorrow...

Compliance

With all funny business that has gone on in the banking sector over years, here and abroad, you would have thought that compliance to the "right" way of doing things would be better today. Why "right" and not "correct"? Cos there is no friggin right way given the conditions we operate under.

Let's see, we have the interests of 3 distinct groups of people;
1) Bank (Shareholders, entity)
2) PFCs/RMs (Personal Financial Consultants/Relationship Managers, Fulfillers of Dreams)
3) Customers (Investors, Savers, Borrowers)

Now let's see... As a PFC, i'm supposed to analyse a customer's financial needs and suggest the best way forward in meeting his/her aims. Be it savings for retirement, money for a child's education or just plain money to buy a car. So really, i wouldn't call it a fiduciary duty, but i should be doing my best to ensure my customer gets what he needs. Apart from just my conscience, it is mandated by law that i have to find out the person's needs and recommend products based on those needs. Yay! Alighnment between the Law and my innermost desires (partly at least).

Problem is, there are also the interests of the bank to consider. What is the purpose of a bank? To make money, simple as that. Anything wrong with that? Of course not, everyone has to eat right? And we all expect our shares in whatever company to appreciate, not excepting banks.

Now, PFCs/RMs are the front end in selling products to customers and though investment products don't make up the majority of bank earnings, it has certainly been taking a bigger and bigger share of the revenue pie. So how do banks encourage their salespeople to sell more? By having sales targets that have to be met in order for commissions to be paid out. This is where the disconnect occurs. When we get specific sales targets for specific classes of products, PFCs/RMs would darn well try their best to meet them, afterall, it is in their interests to do so. If we don;'t meet those targets, we don't get our commissions. To hell with the customers, they can jolly well buy whatever product whose target i have not met! (Pretty extreme sounding and i won't do that). But hopefully u can see the conflict of interests here.

Right now, i get a basic wage and will get commissions should i meet the dreaded revenue point tagets. While i don't see a way of completely decoupling wages from sales, perhaps there could be 3rd part of my total wage. Something based on the softer side of things. Whether the customer has gotten the product MOST appropiate to him/her. Not just somewhat appropiate or very appropiate but MOST appropiate from the list of products i have.

Very very raw idea i know but there must be a way to make things better.

Balaclava at 5pm

Went to Balaclava (Sp?) for the first time today. Yes yes, super suaku etc but i haven't been here for quite some tmie now and another couple of reasons being i neither drink nor enjoy secondhand smoke. Certainly didn't see what was so attractive about the place but perhaps that had to do with it being 5 something in the arvo when we went :P.

Before even sitting down, there was already minor drama with a knocked table and spilled drink. Don't quite know if it was clumsy oh me or issac that actually nudged the table. Only knew that there was a tall glass of reddish juice that toppled and i had to jump back to save my white shirt. Blur tootz me should have offered to pay for the knocked over cranberry juice but i was too stunned to even think of it. Totally ungentlemanly!

Suffice to say the other 5 had their double serves of drinks while i just munched the chippies nonstop. It was only after a few mouthfuls that i remembered the show Along Came Polly. Something about x% of people not washing their hands after using the toilet and then sticking their hands into bowls of chips/nuts.

It's weird how some people turn totally red after a couple of drinks and others look pale as sheet no matter how many they've had. Vincent and Zeon (what a funky sounding name... i hear you) looked like they'd just spent an entire day roasting on a beach. All they needed were a couple of claws to complete the disguise.

Leng is such a regular there that all the wait staff prolly know her well already. She stayed on after we left... supposedly till the wee hours of the morning again. Don't know how she's able to find the energy to go to work the next day.

yawn... i know this sounds pretty lifeless cos i feel pretty much that way at the moment. Just can't freaking sleep. Will treat this entry as a blurred and greyed out record of what should have been an exciting thing.

Grooming Day

Pretty fun day. Grooming day, which i understood as them telling you that shirts had to be tucked in etc etc... NOT QUITE!

We started off by having the girls and guys break up into 2 groups. One to be led by a well dressed fellow, Justin, and the other a prim lady, Lorraine.

Seeing as Justin was so well dressed, we thought he would tell us how to match our shirts and ties but seeing him standing on the other side of the room from the table full of fabrics filled us all with dread. Worse was to come as he beckoned us over to tables with mirrors, bowls of water, TWEEZERS!!?! and EYEBRUSHES!!?!

First thing we sat down, he said "We'll need to approach this session with an open mind." That couple with the aforementioned implements, ominous! The next couple of hours were spent doing facial washes, masks!!? (WTF i hear you say), moisturizing etc. Sighhh... But at least apart from our egos, it was still pretty painless.

"Now i'll show you how to pluck your eyebrows", winsome smile. ARGHH!! Flee for your lives! RUN!! *Sound of elephants stampeding* I snapped out of it to a voice proclaiming, "Keith shall be my model for this exercise". So up i went to the front of the class (4 other guys sitting there barely containing their laughter) to sit on a high stool. Argh! I never felt so much pain before! I mean sometimes your hair gets caught on something and u feel pain as it is ripped off but at least those are sudden and not premeditated. But this time, i could see the tweezers coming closer and closer and then i heard the *twang* sound before i felt pain, lots of pain. "OUCH", and all the girls at the other end of the room turned around. I could hear the waves of laughter and "Now you know what we girls go through to look good!" Argh, screw it, forget the looking good, girls, i hereby give you my fullest permission not to pull your eyebrows, armpit hair, brazillian wax, leg wax... etc etc... just use a friggin shaver! "OUCH!!!"

Our dear friend Justin then proceeded to "clean up" my eyebrows with quick, sharp pulls of a tweezer on my eyebrows! By the 2nd and 3rd pulls, i was beginning to get all misty eyed. Only thing that stopped me from gushing tears was how hilarious the whole situation was. Besides, i wasn't going to embarass myself further by bawling like a baby, i would do that during lunch in the toilet.

What made the whole thing worse was the Justin only did one side for me, so i had to do the other side! Of all the indignaties thrust upon me already, now i had to inflict the pain on myself or walk around with one well groomed side and the other looking like a wild pandan bush! Sighh... what to do, pull lor!

Next section was conducted by Jason, a hairstylist from Choice Cuts. He was late cos he was up till 3 working (on what i do not know) and could not sleep till 6am cos he was coughing badly. Anyway, he gave us tips on what we should do with our hair... boring stuff mostly.

After lunch, we had Lorraine teach us how to match our clothes and also general dressing sense. pretty interesting, never knew shirts were so complicated. 1) Collars had to be right height (aren't they all ONE height?) 2) Button down collars must always be buttoned down even if there was no tie one (fair enough). 3) The wideness of the collars had to match your chin (HUH?!) 4) Tilt your tie slightly to match the tilt of your nose (HUH?!)...... a few other things too... suffice to say most of them i never considered important enough to even think about.

Anyway, lots of stuff on pants too which spurred me to get new pants. Just as well that i didn't get them over the weekend before today's class. See, i washed my pants last thursday and while ironing them on friday, i pulled out a tag that said "Dry Clean Only". "Stuff it, time to get some new pants anyway".

Ok, i know it's all disjointed and stuff but i really haven't the tie nor the inclination to sort it out. Read (past tense) at your own peril.

Not So Old Dog, But New Tricks

Been at training at a bank for a week and a day now...

Think the bank i'm working at has the longest training time for PFCs (personal financial consultants and not Phua Fried Chicken). As for classmates, gf was right, they are of a certain calibre in looks. Yes, the girls are all pretty and friendly. In this business, appearance counts for a lot and much as i hate the whole idea of aesthetics playing such a big part in employee selection, i see the merits of it in class everyday! :)

First week has been pretty darn interesting. Learnt a lot about credit cards and their ins and outs. Also, how the bank makes money from them. "Charge interest lor!", i hear you say. Yup, you got that right, a whopping 24% interest per annum. Ahh.. but you see, many peeps (and undesirably from the bank's point of view) are transactors who pay their CC bills before their 22 days are up. So what the bank really wants are people who revolve their credit card nonstop so they can pay their 24% :). Now to find such people to sign up, all for the glory of the bank! Of course it would suck if they defaulted or somehow squirmed out of it. No worries thuogh, good luck the next time they try and sign up for a credit card, see, there is this thing called a credit bureau that captures all the data of people and their payment patterns be it CC, loans or whatever. All in all, we had a glimpse of credit cards and the various deposits :)

If you wanna know some of the ways to errr...avoid uneccessary credit card fees, jump into lower interest rate credit facilities, feel free to let me know, i'll help on condition that u sign up for a credit card with me :))

Wassup!

Hey everyone! Hey poor, neglected blog!

Been quite a while since i last wrote in here. Previously, i complained that there really wasn't very much to write about then suddenly heaps of things happened and i had no time to write!

Let's see, been to perth and kl, took 4 MAS sanctioned exams and had my first day at work today!

Perth. Went there for CNY with my parents and had a great time! Lots of good food and catching up with old friends like Hy and Jass. Oh, also played lots of badminton but i discovered i'm really bad at it now, think i'll stick to tennis!

Coming back from Perth, i had to take 4 exams; M1, M5, M9 and HI (Health Insurance). Had to clear these before i was to be hired by Standard Chartered Bank (SCB). Cleared the first one easy and got too complacent and promptly failed the 2nd one! Bloody hell, that was the first multiple choice test i have ever failed! Even in Uni when i had a 10 question mcq test that i knew nothing about and guessed a b c d a b c d a b got me a mark of 6/10 but this time luck wasn't on my side. Suffice to say i took it a lot more seriously and cleared the others without too much difficulty. Especially HI since i had a ton of help from Denise and her old, highlighted textbook.

As a reward of sorts, i got to follow Joanna up to KL for the Easter long weekend. Now anyone who drives regularly up to KL in a Singapore registered vehicle knows the Malaysian traffic police view the seperatists' vehicles as year end bonuses. So it was no surprise that we got pulled over no more than 15 minutes after clearing the courseway at tuas. Apparently, 110km/h was considered speeding when a freaking board just down the road proclaimed the speed limit to be 110hm/j (J for Jam which is hour in malay i believe). Luckily Auntie and Polly were not having any of it and after a brief consultation between the copper and his mate in a van parked nearby, they decided that it was "Wrong number" and waved us on. I really don't understand why they don't try and stamp this rubbish out. Just put an anti corruption officer in a Singapore registered vehicle and catch every one of those clowns! Anyway, it was all worth it as the food there was GREAT!

Was treated really really wonderfully by Joanna and family. Had a great time playing with her nephew John John. He has perfected the art of flattery to get out of trouble, and all at the age of 4+. Do something wrong and he says "i love you" unashamedly. Worked on me for a while then i finally told him that i would tell his mommy and she would introduce his old friend teng tew (rottan) to his bottom. New tack, "Dear (Joanna) loves you!"

Joanna's bro also brought us all over the place for great food. Loved the satay over there. Each stick was a veritable pound of meat (ok, maybe not) but at least it wasn't like the scawny, anorexic ones we have here in singapore which are kinda like our lians.

Tiring to write and even more tiresome to read i reckon so i'll stop now... "1st Day of Work" will have to wait till tomorrow.