If God Was A Banker (22 page)

'Hi Anindyo. How are you?'

'Karuna, couldn't get through to Reena and so I'm calling you. Any idea where Sundeep would be? He is not reachable and we do not know where he is?'

'Wasn't he supposed to have dinner with you and the branch managers tonight?' Karuna asked.

'No, he sent me an SMS this morning from Mumbai airport asking me to cancel it.'

'No, Anindyo. I have no clue where he is. Sorry. If you do get through to him, please ask him to give me a call. I have also been trying to get in touch with him.'

She was quite surprised. 'Where is he? Why did he lie to me?' thought Karuna as she took the taxi back home.

A couple of days later, an SMS was waiting for Karuna when she woke up in the morning. It was from Sundeep. She had come back early the previous night as she had a terrible headache. There was no incentive for her to stay back in office as Sundeep was travelling. She had gone off to sleep and had put her phone on silent. Nitin had come back home late and had found her asleep. He didn't bother to wake her up.

The message read: 'Let's meet at ten. I haven't had you in a while. Am desperately waiting.' She saw the message and smiled. It was actually over a week since she had made out with Sundeep. Despite the headache, she got dressed and went to office. She reached office at nine sharp, hoping to see Sundeep there. But there was no sign of him.

At ten, she tried calling him on his mobile. His phone was off. She was a bit worried. Sundeep had sent a message asking her to meet him at ten. He hadn't come in yet. This had never happened in the past. In the past, whenever he was running late, he had called. Why not today? Finally she went to Reena.

'Reena, where is Sundeep?'

'He is in Delhi. Will be back only tomorrow,' she said and added sarcastically, 'Why? He didn't tell you?'

Karuna was a bit taken aback. She was confused. If Sundeep was in Delhi, why would he ask her to meet him at ten? She opened the message and read it again. Yes. She had read it correctly. Why did Sundeep do this?

As she read the last portion of the message where the sent details normally appear, realisation dawned on her. The message was not for her. She read the message once more.

'Let's meet at ten. I haven't had you in a while. Am desperately waiting... Sent 6.30 p.m. Sundeep had sent it to someone in Delhi last evening at half past six and by mistake the message got sent to her. She had wrongly assumed that it was sent in the morning. The world collapsed around her. Sundeep was two-timing her. Whether it was two-timing or more, she couldn't say.

She couldn't even go and confront him on this. After all, he was the boss. That she had no
locus standi
was something she never thought about. Sundeep was probably doing to her what she was doing to Nitin.

N
YB was a business leader in almost all the business segments it operated in. Sundeep drove his people to perform consistently at high levels. It's branch banking business was the best in India. The customer service at nyb was legendary. It was also the most preferred bank for people to work in. The intellect quotient in the bank was enormous. nyb was a place where people could make a career for themselves. They were the only organisation in India with a large bench strength. If one person went out to a larger job overseas, five guys would put up their hands to take that job, and each one would be equally competent. Such was the environment in which nyb operated.

Around the same time Citibank started revamping its retail business and started investing in India. The global brand came in with an aggression rarely seen since the days when Sundeep and Swami had launched NYB's retail business in India. They started eating into NYB's market share rapidly and, in less than a year's time, they overtook NYB in all aspects of the business. This was bad news for Sundeep.

The worst hit was the branch banking and wealth management business. Citibank had deep pockets and was definitely a better brand. They started hiring the best people from NYB. Anindyo had no clue as to what was going wrong.

Sundeep would go on the rampage in the branch banking meetings.
'Kuch bhi karo. Citibank ko khatam karo.
We will have to beat them at any cost.' He became ruthless with the people in charge of the businesses. Despite the fact that Anindyo and Sundeep were good friends, and despite the fact that they would sleep with the same relationship manager at night, Anindyo started feeling the heat.

Good-looking women dominated the Relationship Management team in NYB. Sundeep's policy was to hire pretty girls, with plunging necklines, who would smile at the customer and make him swoon and sign up for investing through NYB. This policy paid rich dividends for some time, but when Citibank came up with better products and services, NYB did not know what hit them. The pretty girls were no match for the qualified and trained financial advisors at Citibank. The pressure soon started telling on NYB's RMs. The good ones quit and joined other banks. The ones left behind were the average ones. In their quest for success, they started resorting to unethical means to get in investments and sell insurance. The number of dissatisfied and disgruntled customers started growing by the day.

Anindyo Roy tried his best to control the team, but it was too large a team. The attitudes he and Sundeep had imbibed in them were difficult to change in a hurry.

Malintent combined with a rampaging bull stock market was a deadly combination. There were some quick bucks to be made. The wealth managers in NYB started forging customers' signatures and transferring funds from their savings accounts to various mutual funds. It was just a matter of time before the bubble burst.

N
YB had three categories of customers—Value Plus customers, Super Value customers, and Club Class customers. Customers were graded as per their relationship value with nyb. Customers with relationship value of over one million dollars brought up the Club Class. They were the most pampered customers. Legend had it that NYB once hired a helicopter to ferry a Club Class customer from Mumbai to Pune, when a landslide had blocked the highway.

Arun Jain was a Club Class customer of the Nehru Place branch. He had a relationship value in excess of two million dollars. He had a set pattern as far as his banking habits were concerned. He would go to the bank every Monday morning to check the status of his deposits. He hadn't missed his weekly visit even once in the last two years.

He would leave home at 9.25 a.m., reach the bank ten minutes later, have a cup of coffee with the branch manager, and then leave with his statement of accounts. His relationship manager was a cute little girl, Nidhi Agarwal. She was one of the top performing relationship managers with NYB and was also one of Anindyo Roy's favourites.

Arun Jain had been banking with NYB for over a decade. Today he swore by the bank. All the new foreign banks in India had been chasing him for his money, but he never moved his money from NYB. He was a seventy-year-old guy and all his children—two sons and one daughter—were in USA. The last time he visited them was four years ago.

When his daughter was expecting her first child, Arun Jain and his wife decided to pay them a visit and help them out. They packed their bags and left for the US. They planned to be there for six months.

Before he left, Arun met the branch manager and Nidhi Agarwal together. 'I know my money is safe with you guys. Please take care of it.'

He handed them a small piece of paper. 'This is my e-mail ID and my daughter's phone number. Please get in touch in case you need anything from me. I will come back and see you.'

'Not to worry, Mr Jain. We will take care of your money as if it's our own. Do let us know the progress of your daughter's delivery. Give her our best wishes,' Nidhi told him as she shook his hand outside the main door of the bank.

The equity markets in India were going through a bull phase. Investment products and insurance sales were the mantras and every bank was selling them as if they were going out of fashion. Customers were being convinced to move money from fixed deposits to mutual funds. This was not without reason. The mutual fund companies paid the banks a commission for every rupee of mutual funds sold. The money that the banks made on mutual fund sales was more lucrative than holding them as deposits.

Of course, there were a few banks that would look at the risk appetite of customers before recommending them a mix of deposits, debt funds, and equity mutual funds. These banks would endlessly research the markets and advise customers appropriately, even if it meant throwing away a chance to make a few dollars. NYB was definitely not one of them.

Sundeep was different. For him the result was more important than the means. He pushed his people to sell as much of these products as they could. To energise the sales fraternity, he launched a sales contest titled,
'Hawa se Hawaii.'
The objective of this contest was to motivate employees to become heroes from zeroes. It was a three-month contest with a trip to Hawaii as the bumper award for the winner.
'Hawa se Hawaii'
was an instant hit. Sales of investments and insurance products skyrocketed.

For the next two months, NYB was the largest distributor of mutual funds across India. Sundeep and Anindyo kept the interest in the contest alive, by publishing weekly results, announcing spot incentives, holding impromptu get-togethers, and more.

As the contest entered the last week, there were two contestants in the race, Nidhi Agarwal from the Nehru Place branch and Pooja Deshmukh from the Bandra branch in Mumbai. Pooja was leading by 2.2 crores in mutual funds. This being the last week of the contest, daily results were being posted on the NYB intranet. By the penultimate day, Pooja had sold 1.3 crores worth of mutual funds more than Nidhi. Nidhi had managed to pull back but she had not done enough.

On the last day Nidhi needed to sell Rs 1.3 crore more of mutual funds as compared to Pooja to win the contest. No one gave her a chance. But she had an ace up her sleeve. One of her biggest customers, a factory owner in Gurgaon, was supposed to give her a cheque of Rs 5.1 crores for investment in Franklin Blue chip fund. He had committed to those funds on the last day of the contest.

She landed at his house in Sector V of Gurgaon at a quarter to ten in the morning. Mutual funds normally accept investments till three in the afternoon. She had given herself enough time to collect the cheque and bank it with the fund house.

As she turned right from NH 8 and entered the approach road, she saw more activity than usual. She crossed two vans that looked like mobile TV crews. 'Looks like this guy has closed another deal today,' she said to herself, looking at the huge contingent of media vans outside his house.

When she reached his house, she was surprised to find it surrounded not only by TV cameras and a horde of curious onlookers but also police jeeps. She didn't know what was going on. She pushed her way through and reached the main gate of the bungalow, only to be told by the security guard that income tax personnel had raided her customer late last night and that he had gone underground.

Her head started spinning. She was banking on this guy for a large sum and if she didn't manage a replacement deal, she would lose the contest. She couldn't let it go after coming so close. She had been the Number One Relationship Manager all her life.

Driving back in her red Hyundai Accent, she was wondering what to do. She stopped for a fuel refill. While she was flipping through the pages of her diary for last-minute referrals on investment deals, a piece of paper slipped out. She picked it up from the car floor and looked at it. The piece of paper was saying something to her. As she looked at the paper, a low whistle came out of her mouth. She put her Accent into top gear and soon hit the highway headed towards Delhi. Once she reached the branch, she signed a few papers and gave them to the branch service guys, and then went back home smiling. The markets had jumped another 120 points on that day.

The next afternoon, the results of
'Hawa se Hawaii'
contest were announced. And the winner was Nidhi Agarwal. She was thrilled. Her phone was constantly ringing that day. She got over a hundred congratulatory messages. Not only were her colleagues at NYB congratulating her, but people from the mutual fund fraternity were also calling to congratulate her. She had sold twenty-seven crores of mutual funds in the last thirty days, of which five-odd crores came in on the last day, and that was a record for any individual.

The stock market gave her a twenty-one-gun salute and surged even further.

She was basking in this newfound glory, when she got a call from Anindyo Roy's office. It was his secretary Melanie.

'Nidhi, Anindyo wanted to meet you today. He was wondering if you could see him in the next fifteen minutes. Why don't you run up to his office.'

'Five minutes,' and off she went dashing towards the main door.

Anindyo's office was on the fifth floor of the same building. In the next five minutes, she was standing outside Anindyo's office.

When Anindyo saw her waiting, he got up from his chair and hugged her. 'Well done, Nidhi. I am proud of you.' The hug lingered for longer than normal.

'Thank you, sir. It wouldn't have been possible without your encouragement.' Anindyo didn't release her from the hug, neither did she try and move away.

'So when are you planning your trip to Hawaii?'

'Sir, I plan to leave next month. I need a favour from you.'

'Can I refuse you?'

'After my trip to Hawaii, I was planning to take two weeks off and do a trip to Rio. No point going that far and not go to Rio.'

'I too have always wanted to go to Rio, but never got a chance,' said Anindyo.

'Sir, why don't you come now? It's off season and we will get good deals,' said Nidhi.

'How can I join you? You might be going with your family,' said Anindyo coyly.

'Sir,
aap ishara to karo, sab ko chod ke aa jayenge.'
Nidhi was teasing Anindyo.

'
T
oh theek hai,
I will confirm to you by tomorrow. Only you and me. Is that a deal?'