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PIRG's Recommendations for Banking

A. BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION ACT
Under present law, you the debtor have virtually no rights in protecting your assets from a Creditor, often times deliberately vindictive. The business you started with the best of intentions can go legitimately wrong with mitigating circumstances while present laws grant all rights to your Creditor to snoop down with stealth, deceit, appoint receivers acting only in the Lender’s unilateral interest to sell off your assets and pay the Creditor. Your $600,000 Company can be sold for $80,000 while the receivers pay themselves hefty fees and give the bank the balance as they can always sue you for any deficiency, again hindering your right to survive and prosper. They would put you down and do everything possible to keep you down, many of their devastating tactics done behind the scene and difficult if not impossible to prove in a court of law. Financial reverses should not necessarily mean the end of your business, and a proper BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION ACT as exist in civil countries via a Court Appointed Trustee fair to both debtor and creditor would establish long overdue rights and remedies for consumers. It will also establish orderly payments to creditors, rather than rewarding the swiftest or the creditor that is able to exert the most pressure on the debtor. Bankruptcies can be categorized in various chapters like Liquidation, Reorganization, Debt Adjustments, etc. For instance, a Reorganization chapter would give you time through a court appointed trustee to re-establish your business before your often vexatious bank or other creditor rushes in with the avaricious objective of collecting their debt while discounting your assets and destroying you in the process, even suing you personally for deficiencies.

B. FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT
This act will govern how consumer’s credit information can be SOLD, obtained, used, and distributed, and makes it mandatory that a bank or financial institution issue in writing its reason or refusal to grant you credit, AND, if their information was obtained from external sources on which the lender based its decision, they must also inform the client where they got such information, and exactly what was reported. Clients have an inalienable “RIGHT TO KNOW” what is being said or traded about them, and nothing is “confidential” to the extent of excluding the very consumer in question.

C. EXPEDITED FUNDS AVAILABILITY ACT
This would limit how long a bank may delay use of local and foreign funds deposited into your account. While present procedures and practices are favorable only to banks and other lenders, for poor people this expedited option can determine food on the table whereas banker and corporate issuer can feast on steak. Prior to PIRG, banks would hold you local cheques for 7 days, even from their own bank’s different branch, and a foreign cheque for a preposterous 42 days when PIRG paid a local company with a foreign cheque which reached the payee’s US account and was PAID in TWO days. So how honest are local banks?

D. FAIR DEBT COLLECTION PRACTICES ACT
This would limit both the method and manner in which banks, financial institutions, and recognized collection agencies seek to collect from a debtor. Under this act, a mortgagor’s property can be sold without having to publicly humiliate the borrower, and your car can be repossessed and sold if you failed to pay, BUT without the bank insensitively publishing your complete number plate or license embarrassing you and your family when fair methods can be used in the collection of a legitimate debt. Even our own courts are insensitive to our archaic and destructive laws of NAMING & SHAMING a debtor with its SALE AFTER LEVY advertisements in the daily press when the goods rightly levied upon can still be sold so as to repay the Creditor. A tenant just having his chattels levied upon for arrears of rent does not have to be publicized and further shamed by a bailiff. Presently, some banks forward their collections to two local collection agencies charging BOTH bank and debtor collection fees, while insisting that the bank instruct its debtors to pay them direct. This way their greed means more money from your pockets into theirs. Consumers must always know their rights in being fully aware that a bank or any other creditor CANNOT refuse accepting payments from them to reduce or liquidate their indebtedness. Further, PIRG’S policy is simply this: IF A CREDITOR HIRES A REPUTABLE COLLECTOR OR COLLECTION AGENCY, THEN THE CREDITOR SHOULD PAY THE COLLECTOR WHO HAVE NO RIGHT CHARGING YOU THE DEBTOR ANY ADDITIONAL FEES WHATSOEVER. PERIOD!

E. ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER ACT
This will limit an individual’s liability if their ATM or Credit Card is lost or stolen. This Act would call for and ensure prompt investigation and fraudulent transactions made to the holder’s Credit Card or ATM account. In the US and Canada, when such incidence occur you are ONLY responsible for limited liability of under US$50.00 if any at all AND you do not have to beg and plead with your card issuer as is the practice with Trinidad’s banks who forever seek to interrogate and suddenly mistrust you after lengthy “investigations”.

F. TIME RECORDED DEPOSITS
There have been instances where deposits were made and not instantly credited to depositors account. Confident that they are in funds, a depositor may issue a cheque immediately thereafter to a payee seeking teller service only to be refused, with the notion “REFER TO DRAWER” or “INSUFFICIENT FUNDS” which in itself is now an offence. A printed deposit receipt bearing the date and time of a deposit or teller transaction or cash payments towards a credit card grants legitimacy to a transaction and rights to a consumer.

G. EQUAL RIGHTS TO CREDIT ACCESS AND USE
This act guarantees you equal rights in dealing with any Creditor who regularly offers credit, including Banks, Finance Companies, Credit Union, Trading Companies, etc. When you apply for credit, a creditor may not: Ask about or consider your sex, race, or religion. YOU WILL HAVE THE RIGHT TO: A. Have credit in your birth name. B. Have a lender accept any qualified co-signer other than your spouse if one is necessary to guarantee your indebtedness. C. Full access to all products and services from any creditor for which you may reasonably qualify.

H. MISCELLANEOUS

1. To remove completely the archaic system of a “CROSSED CHEQUE” which is 2007 is an absolutely ludicrous policy by uncaring local banks who know for a fact this does NOT exist in developed countries. A cheque is a cheque and should be paid by the verification process of both Drawer and payee. Banks like Royal Bank and Scotia Bank of Canada, Citi bank in the USA, and Barclays bank in the UK to which some Trinidad banks still maintain certain established links including operations, training, etc. operate quite differently here while our banking regulators the Central Bank is far more concerned about a bank’s economic sagacity than about consumer rights. The Central Bank must mandate local banks bank to cash its own cheque regardless of which of THEIR branch it is drawn on. Trinidad’s insensitive Banks, despite their massive “Profits” extracted by questionable means mainly against the poor and struggling, are even shamelessly refusing to invest in signature verification equipment with Scotia Bank still using the archaic 3X5 “Signature Card” to verify a drawer’s signature while the teller keeps you in line to manually find the card, and then have their supervisor verify and endorse a cheque before payment is made. Your time is certainly not valuable to them since they view you as mendicants anyway, and even more poignant is that their regulators the Central Bank are not insisting on banking efficiency either, by its very deafening silence giving tacit approval to local banking inefficiencies, abuses and downright predatory practices. You the consumer must be embarrassed, inconvenienced and humiliated. WHO CARES? Certainly NOT your bank. But you bet if signature verification equipment were a means of loan repayment to fill their bulging pockets, this simple software would be installed at every branch to empty your pockets into their coffers.

2. To establish a CREDIT GRADING system whereby, since all banking clients cannot be blue chip, they can be graded accordingly and afforded credit based on contributing factors. Lower grades of credit, or higher risk would inevitably attract higher interest rates but may still be acceptable to say honest entrepreneurs who simply need another break to exert their talents, create employment, support many other downstream businesses offering further employment, and pay taxes for the general good of self and country . When a puerile Trinidad banker engages in malevolent action to stymie an individual’s economic growth, they not only affect the one individual, but their malevolent and petty actions also affect the national economy as recognized by the IMF in their 1997 report on banking policies in Trinidad’s economy. In civil countries, SUB-PRIME lending is still big business provided a lender’s risk is secured. The successful Donald Trump would never have been able to rebound to be financially bigger and better were he black and operating in Trinidad’s banking climate. So too would Walt Disney and J C Penny who failed many times before finally succeeding. Now, don’t misunderstand PIRG here. We are responsible enough to know that banks operate for the overall good of the country and as such they cannot ever be slack with people’s deposit money. But what we are vehemently against is the policy of Trinidad bankers to consistently seek their adaptation of “A” or blue chip credit to which the indigenous backbone of our economy would NOT qualify for many a still valid reason. AND, if they only failed once before, local banks behave as if that was the one and ONLY change they had, and will ever have. However, since Trinidad’s bankers and bank employees forever see themselves and their so called “elite” clients as infallible, they absolutely don’t expect certain families and entrepreneurs to make any errors in repaying their loans. Thus they don’t have the faintest idea of a GRADING SYSTEM as this would mean greater wealth in the hands of the masses, the very sector they limit the majority of their products to in ways that can best be described as limited to pawn-broking.

3. FORCLOSURE DEFENCE SYSTEM. Even with Trinidad’s rapidly escalating real estate values, losing your home to foreclosure is like a piece of pie to local mortgage lenders who can simply place your property in the dailies, and presto, you and your family are out of your home and on the streets. NOBODY CARES about you! and Trinidad’s archaic consumer protection laws give you the borrower absolutely no rights whatsoever to save your home. Since banks make up about 76% of mortgage loans in Trinidad, they are also run by bankers, and believe it or not, their ego and pettiness often times do come into play to the extent where they can even refuse your arrears if you were assumed late too often in the past. Homeownership is the gateway to an individual’s national pride and our mortgage consumers should have some rights, including the FIRST RIGHT OF REDEMPTION to reclaim their home even on the steps of the courts once they can pay up all arrears and foreclosure cost. They should also qualify for a mortgage matrix system whereby years of good payments automatically grants an extension or payment roll over in unexpected events like job loss, loss of family member, depression, other medical, etc, non of which are ever planned.

4. COMMUNITY BANKS. PIRG believes if a successful enterprise earns its money in a particular community, banks no exceptions, it should develop the community beyond decorating a Round-a-Bout bearing their advertising, and offering football jerseys to keep the improvised and frustrated black boys quiet. The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh is also usually classified as a community development bank. It was founded by Muhammad Yunus. In 2006, the Grameen Bank and its founder were awarded the Nobel Prize. In the United States, Community development banks (CDBs) are banks designed to serve residents and spur economic development in low to moderate-income (LMI) geographical areas. They are required "to lend, invest, and provide services primarily to LMI individuals or communities in which it is chartered to conduct business." But what have local banks done for local business in the communities they serve, except to fill their pockets? When CDBs provide retail banking services, they usually target customers from "financially underserved" demographics. Following PIRG’S public and humiliating attack on their methods for substantial if not questionable ‘Profits”, one prominent bank embarked on a large PR blitz thereafter to announce a $40M “give back”. But the fine line before the ink was dried read that this was over a 5 year, amounting to a mere $8M per year, less than a drop in the bucket when this shameless bank was then earning around $800M PER YEAR and increasing, now surpassing the ONE BILLION DOLLAR MARK, and climbing. All this in a small country of just 6 banks, 1.3M people and nearing $4B in over gross after tax “profits”. If local banks through their association were to simply pool a certain percentage of their profits into a national development fund well managed with say a maximum of $100M per a year if even for a limited time, do you have any idea how this can catapult not only the spirits of our youths and others who are hopeless and demoralized, but the entire economy as well? This drive can establish trade schools, import specialist tutors, teach financial management and independence, family responsibility and control. Once you prick the consciences of individuals running other successful corporations, they too will join in contributing to the national development fund further empowering individuals with an otherwise bleak future to become self employed and upright citizens with a great sense of pride and social responsibility.

With an existing 40 to 60% teller occupancy to cut their cost, it can take anywhere from 28 to 72 minutes of your valuable time to complete retail banking at most banks in Trinidad, including their own credit card payments, with even longer lines and less tellers at month-end when transactions are greater. Add signature verification equipment, well trained and well paid tellers with less supervisor intervention and the long lines would soon become shorter, showing respect for you and your time.

6. TOILET ACCESS AT BANKS. Isn’t it very bizarre that when local bankers visit their principals and other quality retail banking facilities in civil countries they are cognizant of TOILET ACCESS as an integral part of the foreign bank’s operation? Despite massive and climbing “profits” extracted by too high spreads in the buying and selling of foreign currency and the bank’s borrowing and lending of money, a rapacious and brigand 5% on merchant’s point of sale equipment (Yes, every you swipe your credit card the local bank charges your retailer 5% when the American average is 2%) and way too high mortgage and credit card loans producing anywhere from $300M to over $1B “profits” Annually from the small to the largest two banks, local banks are now shamelessly claiming it would cost them too much to install this human requirement, even for older banking clients who are insulted and challenged not only with long lines manned by understaffed and dawdling tellers, but by increasing medical conditions like bladder control and joint pains recently forcing two desperate senior citizens to urinate in potted plants at two banks recently much to the chagrin of our pompous little bankers with their head in the sky. As if those lame convenient excuses were not enough, they then sought to claim “Security issues” for their refusal to install the standard courtesy of these much needed and overdue toilet facilities standard in civil countries.

7. TRANSPARENCY. Banks need to engage greater customer care in educating banking consumers of shifts in their policies which may at times become quite necessary in light of todays economic and fraud security concerns. For instance, within the last two years banks possibly through their powerful Bankers Association established a cheque verification system for all cheques in excess of $5000.00, before cash could be dispensed at the teller lines. YET, whether by design or its usual callous disregard for the masses who constitute the nucleus of banking since their combined small deposits creates the money the banks loan for profits, banks never informed consumers of this. So if the director of a company paying the tradesman by cheque for work done is at a meeting or unreachable on the beach, or their cell phone is switched off, the payee, after waiting in line excessively, simply cannot be paid as the cheque writer cannot be reached for “verification”. Since most tradesmen live pay-cheque to pay-cheque this could at times come down to not having food on their table to feed their families, often times including young children. THIS IS NOT BANKING. For if this consumer is informed of banking policies you will reasonably and automatically adjust to suit. People if trusted are generally honest and the majority should not be forced to pay for the actions of a minuscule few. And surprisingly, while bank fraud is committed by the minutest of individuals at times operating as a notorious ring, the greater banking fraud is committed by bank employees either as facilitators, or as downright dishonest individuals who may be caught in time and asked to repay the bank before disappearing, or whose family is so understandably embarrassed that they re-mortgage even their home to save their family reputation, etc, thus avoiding unfavorable publicity even the bank would really wish to be contained so as to avoid at almost any cost a run on their institution.

QUESTION: WHY DO BANKS IN TRINIDAD DO A LOT OF THE BAD THINGS THEY DO?

ANSWER: BECAUSE THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT WHILE YOU THE CONSUMER BY STAYING QUIET COMPLAINING TO YOURSELF AND KNOWN DEAF EARS GIVE THEM THE POWER TO SCREW YOU! THEY BANK ON YOU NOT KNOWING YOUR RIGHTS AND CHALLENGING THEM.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.
DON’T LET THEM CONTINUE TO SCREW YOU!

And, by challenging them to do right, you also pave the future for your children and grandchildren too.