A 30-year old former bank relationship manager recounts the horrid tales of finding easy prey
It seems like yesterday, but it’s already a decade since I passed out of college and got placed in a fancy bank as a relationship manager. The stock markets were gyrating and everyone seemed to believe that it was one-way traffic to make money. A fresh management graduate, I was taken by the pace at which things happened around me. Office at a high rise in Lower Parel was good. Evenings were well spent with seniors who recounted tales of their deals over beer and snacks.
Almost everyone I heard had a tale of having made a killing in the stock markets, real estate and even Ulips. Within a month of orientation, I was put into a team with a bank branch in Andheri, as a relationship manager. It was my duty to make calls to account holders based on details shared by my team leader, with the sole purpose of making them invest in Ulips or a new NFO which was floating. I learnt the gift of gab and managed to coax several people to trust me with their money into financial instruments I had no clue about.
Confidence booster
Drunk on the belief that I indeed knew what I was doing, I started bragging about my abilities with friends and even relatives. Suddenly, everyone felt I was an authority and I too started feeling I knew it all. The going was good till December 2007 and I remember spending the New Year’s Eve with friends at a party. The financial crisis of 2008 struck on us.
I was jolted when some of the people I had sold mutual funds to started calling for advice and to understand what they should do. All I could tell them was that it was a passing phase and things would get better. My reporting boss, instructed me to get them to invest more and average their investments. I remember the markets going down every passing week to even touch 8000 points at some time. By now, I realised I did not know what I was doing.
My branch was merged with another as part of cost cutting. I was lucky to not lose my job. This shift helped me interact less with my old customers. But that was not the problem—I had sold similar weapons of mass destruction to friends and family. I started avoiding them. My girlfriend was no keener to continue the relationship as she felt my job was very uncertain.
I took to drinking to beat the loneliness. Moreover, the managers started to set impossible targets. The whole thing was so stressful. My drinking started to show on me and I started avoiding work. By 2010, I had become a wreck and wanted to get out of the job that I was so happy about in the first place. Two more years of wilderness to find a job, some more loans and I realised it was best to go home and get my life back on track.
I took two more years to regain health and confidence to take charge of my life. I used the interim time to learn about finance and cleared the AMFI exam to become a mutual fund distributor in my tier-2 town. I have learnt one important lesson about money—if you do not understand it, you are to blame yourself. There is no short cut to becoming wealthy, but it is neither impossible to become rich by investing money. I hope today’s youngsters learn from my mistakes than committing their own.
The writer did not wish to share his name, but is today a successful financial distributor