Vanishing money
Using provocatively dressed girls to attract customers is one thing, but sometimes banks take far more dramatic steps to take in money – or to hold on to it, as the case may be.
Last month, an entrepreneur in Taiyuan, the capital of north China's Shanxi Province, reported that a sum of 40 million yuan ($6.18 millon) that one of his relatives kept in a local branch of the Agricultural Bank of China had vanished without a trace, and that the bank had refused to cooperate on the matter.
Wang Hong (alias) is the relative in Taiyuan who deposited the money back in 2009. According to her, she had never imagined a situation where her money would just disappear from a state-owned bank.
Wang first discovered the problem at the end of 2010, when she wanted to withdraw money for the relocation of her workshop. She knew that she had to make an appointment if she wanted to withdraw more than 50,000 yuan ($7,730), but when she did so the bank refused her withdrawal, citing financial strains at the year's end.
After waiting for several days, on December 21 Wang went to a branch of the Agricultural Bank of China to print out the detailed information of one of her accounts.
When she looked at the report she nearly fainted – her balance was zero.
She recalled that she had deposited over 3 million yuan into that account on June 29, 2009, but the details showed that the money had been transferred to other accounts the same day. Till now, the bank has still not fixed the problem.
Tragic pressure
According to an unnamed customer manager at a regional bank in Shenzhen in south China's Guangdong Province, the bank he works for exerts pressure on its employees at the end of every month and year. Sometimes, in order to achieve goals, he has even provided higher interest rates for customers just to attract deposits.
The manager revealed that working in a bank looks easy and profitable, but everyone is actually under a great deal of pressure. On May 13, 2011, Duan Binqi, a customer manager at the Bao'an branch of the Ping An Bank committed suicide, reportedly the result of his unbearable burden at work.
The current bank market is clearly not headed in the right direction. The government must pay greater attention to the issue and guarantee a benign capital market to pull banks out of cash deadlocks; otherwise, a banking tragedy is not far off.
