Retail banking: RBS staff on the streets
In a crisis where excessive credit is at the root of it all, RBS staff in Singapore are up to something that looks rather strange.
Singapore is in recession and redundancies are growing. Property prices are falling and repossessions are rising. Businesses are battening down the hatches. Shops are running sales with 70% discounts.
In short, finances are getting tight.
So it was a surprise to find RBS with a portable stand at one of the busiest points in Orchard Road, outside Isetan where shoppers are offered substantial sale reductions - and then even bigger discounts if they ask for them - handing out credit card application forms.
Of course, it is to be expected that they will do the best credit checking they can - in the circumstances. But the success of that checking depends on historical information - and that means that there may not be current information on that most difficult to identify factor, job security.
As workers run short of cash after Christmas and prepare for Chinese New Year - an even bigger drain on family resources - just a month after Christmas, the attraction of credit is obvious.
As employees in businesses of all kinds openly discuss whether or not their jobs will last until after New Year, with the expected bonuses at risk of much less than expected, or not at all, and with newspaper articles exhorting employers to put workers on short time or offer reduced salaries in place of losing their jobs entirely, the idea of building a credit business is, to say the least, an interesting approach.
Given that RBS is, in effect, in the ownership of the UK Government, and that UK businesses are complaining that UK banks are tightening on credit when they need it to survive, the policy applied in Singapore seems just a little bit open to question.
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