I spent about 40 years in the banking game. What changed since the 70's?​ Well, pretty much everything. Technology, terminology, organisational psychology, ecology and many other “ologies” you can think of. The culture is certainly different.

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Back then, branches had Managers. Today they have Team Leaders.

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Bank Managers were required to be old folk with glasses and, apart from deciding on whose cheques to bounce, had a responsibility to attend Wednesday afternoon sessions at the local business club.

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Today’s Team Leaders, on the other hand, are likely to be young, attractive, wear a bra and have a Cert. IV in something. They must also possess good social skills and be able to discuss important topical social issues, like who’s cheating on who in MAFS.

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In a reasonably sized branch, the next ranking officer was the Accountant, who was not really an accountant at all. His job (yep, “his”) was to make sure that all moving parts of the branch were working. Were the Tellers telling? Were the Clerks clerking? Was the Junior getting the morning tea orders right?

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He also ensured the Manager attended his weekly Wednesday functions, so that the staff could have an early mark and play golf for an hour or two before heading home.

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Then, there were Loans Officers. They did their best to help people buy things, like cars and houses.  How did they decide on who to assist? Well, assessment of character was a critical part of the decision-making process.

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Loans Officers couldn’t type, so they had stenographers to help them. These stenographers wore mini-skirts and sat in front of the Loans Officers while they talked at them. While being talked at, they scribbled wriggly lines in a notebook which was like a code that only specially trained people could decrypt. Later, they would then transcribe their scribbles into the same words the Loans Officer said, and produce documents by pressing levers on a mechanical device called a typewriter. Like the Dodo bird, stenographers are extinct.

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Today, Loans Officers don’t exist. Well, they do, but they are now known as Credit Consultants or something similar, and their job is to feed applicants’ data into a computer and tell them what the computer said.

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Examiners were boring, but important people who examined the work of others, such as “carry forwards” on customers’ ledgers. A typo on Mrs Duckworth’s new statement would have been embarrassing, but amusing. The Examiner’s job was to avoid such calamities.

 

They also examined lots of other stuff that needed examining. They say they were always busy.  Alas, Examiners don’t exist anymore, at least in the banking industry. If you hear the term Examiner today, your mind turns to your proctologist, not a bank dude.

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Tellers of that bygone era were special people. They were custodians of the cash. They were also custodians of a loaded Smith & Wesson pistol, which they carried in their shorts pocket when walking the streets with a bag of cash on route to the NID.

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Ledger machine operators had special skills, like identifying signatures on cheques so they could “post” them to the correct account. They had to do this because account numbers were waiting to be invented.

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Each morning, hundreds of cheques were sorted into alphabetical pigeonholes, then the machine operators would get busy posting them to the customers’ accounts.

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Some customers were naughty and wrote cheques for amounts greater than their ledger balance. These cheques were referred to the Manager who would decide on which ones to bounce and which ones to honour. It was wise to be friendly with him.

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Then, there was a bunch of clerks, like the IBD clerk, exchange clerk and the mail clerk. Clerks these days have titles that end in impressive words, like Consultant, Expert, Officer, Representative or Analyst, preceeded by other impressive words such as Liaison, Satisfaction or Credit.

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As a final thought about the changes over the years, I can’t help but think there is one issue that has influence the culture, not only for the banking industry, but all industries. At a location and a time unknown, somebody (probably a nerdy dude at a Risk Management Committee meeting) invented the concept of KPIs

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 I would like to find this person.