Recently I had some miserable encounters with our assistant bankers. My precious days were ruined by their woeful 'performance'.
I'm not sure what measurement my bank normally takes to hire an assistant banker(or AB). But I'm pretty sure that many ABs here do not have basic banking and product knowledge. I think they were selected just simply because they can talk very well. Maybe it's a bit harsh to say so, but I have had several ocassions when they kept asking me stupid questions until I wanted to smash my monitor screen. They don't know how to distinguish bond and equity, don't have income tax knowledge, don't know what is ISIN, don't know how to use Bloomberg terminal, don't know saturday and sunday are not business days, not IT literate, not aware of some practices which have been implemented for 6 months and the worst thing is....they don't know how to pronounce my name!

"Chee..........." the AB stopped halfway and I broke the silence, "Chee Kien speaking..."

"May I speak to Chee K...eong?" Excuse me, my name is Chee Kien.

"Hi Chee, ...." they exclude "Kien" without my consent at the first place.

"May I speak to Chee Heng?" Sorry, I'm Chee Kien, not Chee Heng.
"You not Chee Heng?" Yes.....(how many times you want me to confirm huh?)

I'm just wondering how they manage their sophiscated private clients effectively. Maybe they are too busy to serve their clients until they have no time to learn all these basic stuff. It's okie, I can understand because "client first" is our utmost goal in this year. However, there are some ABs who never study the procedure but always like to put all the blames on us whenever something goes wrong.
Initially we would be kind enough to show them the right way in a polite manner. But unfortunately, some of them are underestimated and assail us with slander vigorously. In the end, white and black is still the most powerful weapon. Everything written in the procedure is the agreement made by the management.
Another funny thing is, they always think operations know everything. Many ABs always come to me and ask what is the coupon calculation of structured product, what is the libor rate, how to derive the formula, what is the spread, etc. Sometimes the middle office rang me up and asked if I got term sheet for certain products. Sigh...it sounds like operations officer is a CFA, actuarist or trader. If so, the bank should consider sunset the product desk and let operations take over their jobs.
Nevertheless, to be fair, I do salute our Australian ABs for their business knowledge. They are really smart and professional albeit demanding.


*** A few days ago a client asked us about the interest and principal payment of a default bond he bought. He don't know why he received such payments and how they are derived. Hmmm, if you don't know the product well, why you still buy it? If you know it well and buy it, why you still ask?