WHILE financial institutions are not obliged to “extend home service” to meet the needs of their customers who are senior citizens, they can obviously – at the discretion of the branch manager – go out of their way to fulfil those needs as a gesture of goodwill.
Such is the predicament encountered by TikToker NurHatini who had to charter an ambulance to ferry her paralysed/bed-ridden mother to the Public Bank branch in Gurun (Kedah) after being told that her mother has to be personally present to renew her expired ATM card.
As the card has become invalid, NurHatini was unable to withdraw pension money from her mother’s bank account to purchase diapers to meet her need.
“This is actually the disability pension of my late father … it’s not much but it’s just sufficient to buy my mother’s necessities,” bemoaned NurHatini in her TikTok posting which at time of writing has garnered 56,400 Likes, 5,943 comments and 3,481 Shares.
“Even to charter an ambulance requires money … fortunately, St John Gurun understood my mother’s difficulty and rendered an excellent service to her.
“The paramedics also had to help push her mother in and out of the bank while she laid on the bed. One can only imagine how embarrassed Hatini’s mother felt during the whole process,” The Rakyat Post writer Adeline Leong captured the ordeal succinctly.
Based on feedback by netizens – in particular those who had previously worked in financial institutions – it seems that the incident is an isolated one in that most banks would go out of their way to facilitate the needs of immobilised senior citizens or even customers with acute disability for the matter.
Ex-banker Travel Lover who had 21 years of working experience in financial institution said when he previously encountered similar cases of customers who required special needs, the bank staff would attend to the customers at their respective homes.
“As an ex-banker of 19 years at the EON Bank, I recall the son of this customer telling us that his parent has difficulty walking but was already waiting outside our bank … so we dispatched our staff to their car to get his thumb print,” explained Natika Yunos243.
Reena chipped in that “it should be fine if the customer is already in front of the bank as the CCTV can serve as evidence but not at home as there is no SOP (standard operating procedure) for cases such as this.”
Malaysia Consumer Movement secretary Sukhdave Singh urged banks to show more concern for their sickly customers.
“There is no point in publicising their corporate social responsibility (CSR) work when they cannot accommodate their customers,” he told Getaran which is the Bahasa Malaysia news portal for The Vibes.
“The bank could have asked for proof from the family about the woman’s health and sent an officer to her house to sort it out.”
He also urged Bank Negara Malaysia to draw up guidelines on banking services for sick customers.
All else being equal, would it be too demanding for Public Bank which raked in a net profit of RM1.42 bil for its 2Q FFY2022 ended June 30, 2022 or a 2.35% increase over the previous corresponding quarter to be more sensitive to the plight of its bed-ridden senior citizen customers? – Sept 5, 2022
