[Rajeevraj]

I somehow have been below the radar of these RM's all these years. Occasionally someone claiming to be my RM reaches out and says a bunch of things. I mostly am very vague in these calls and 2-3 tries later they give up.

Only one time I actively engaged with an RM was when I needed a term policy and at that time the came with a couple of colleagues and did try to sell me a bunch of things.

[cowboy45]

Originally Posted by Thebat

Hello Everyone,
Recently saw a lot of posts on ICICI Direct and the usefulness of their platform. Being an ex employees of ICICI securities I thought I will provide a few pointers for anyone using the platform.


These points were to give you a glimpse of what happens behind the scenes in a broking house as personally experienced by me. I left the organisation as my conscience did not permit me to missell products to my clients. There are a lot of RM's who genuinely try to advise their clients on their requirements but are constantly hounded by the organisation to fulfill their insurance and equity quotas. The platform of ICICI Direct is excellent and for an equity buy and hold player, it makes a lot of sense due to its ease of use.

Wow. Never thought a forum that I joined during my teens will be one the most valuable sources of in-sight. This thread came in my feed on my phone just when I was thinking about the subject. I went through every post in this thread and I seem to have more understanding of how things work behind the scenes.

My experience is shared like other members here, apart from the fact that I simply tell my RMs to just send the feedback survey assuming they had a meeting with me, and I will submit the same with 5 stars to get them off my back!!

[anumod]

Another point to add here is that without your knowledge, these private banks are putting insurance policies on your name. (This is done by poor employees who were getting pressurized by the management). Off late I got such an insurance from a leading private sector Bank, I am going to file a criminal case on this bank and hopefully that can bring some relief to the customers.

[maddy42]

Thanks for the informative thread.

The issue which i have faced is my parents being sold products which they do not understand but promised good cover and insurance. High time that customers need to sue such unscrupulous practices similar to the US. Made me realise i need to research more on the products which are sold to my folks.

Folks please do have a look at your parents investments in such products. Lots of fraudsters are around with limited knowledge and the Always Be Selling attitude.
Maddy

[drsk]

Originally Posted by Thebat

Hello Everyone,
Being an ex employees of ICICI securities I thought I will provide a few pointers for anyone using the platform.

Thanks for a very informative post!

Anyone who has a salary account with any of the pvt. banks would definitely have faced this situation by now. One also gets assigned a RM when your Net Relationship Value with the bank crosses a certain limit.

I would like to share my experience here. This is from Citibank.
About 10 years back I wanted to start a new investment (SIP) and coincidently I got a call from my RM. Then the meeting happened with the executive and ULIP was pushed to me as an investment option with additonal security of insurance. The executive did not mention it as ULIP (Smart of him and dumb of me). By the time I realised what I got myself into it was few months.

Nevertheless, I continued. Now after 10 years if I check the value now, the returns is less than 5% and it will be negative if adjusted for inflation

[grazd]

Originally Posted by streetfighter

I've had my share of stories, both with ICICI and HDFC bank.


I was once forced to buy a ULIP (which I had suspected to be a Mutual Fund Scheme) as part my car loan availing process.

Another incident which happened recently was I wanted to open a Sukanya Samruddhi Yojna (SSY) account for my daughter with ICICI bank. They tried all their means to persuade me to buy MF/ULIPs, but I didn't budge. They delayed opening the SSY account on the pretext of something or the other and would call me to the bank for document, signature etc and the same selling of MF/ULIPs would start again. Fed up, I escalated the issue online and to the ombudsman after which things got sorted.

As someone else pointed out, RMs after leaving job, take the contacts and call on behalf of their new company. I find this breach of privacy, tried to complain without any resolution.

!

Banks typically trap customers who have gone to the branch for entirely unrelated transaction.

I have had an experience similar to above at a PSU bank, where they tried to sell me an endowment plan when I went to renew my PPF account. In fact the manager told me to close the PPF and put it into the insurance endowment plan.

Her words were,"I'll help you renew the PPF if you can help us and purchase this plan."
I politely said I'll study the plan and revert, fortunately the PPF renewal happened without further drama.

To all those who are being pushed with aggressive and illegal selling tactics, my suggestion is learn to use excel especially XIRR and FV calculations. This will help you independently evaluate the returns on a product. Of course you still need to educate yourself separately regarding the risks involved. No substitution for knowledge and understanding ones rights.

As a rule never make an investment decision in a hurry, especially towards financial year closing.
Never buy an investment product unless you have specially researched it and have a full understanding of risk and return.

Originally Posted by Balthazar

Could you guys recommend a few resources to help an absolute beginner (who has just begun earning) get started? A few books start with and learn the ABC's of investing for instance. After understanding the basics, we could rely on ourselves, and make informed decisions.

As suggested by @sagarpadaki, Freefincal is a useful resource for beginners.
Other resources are:

• Moneylife.com - has good articles on common scams, and on ongoing developments. They also have a non-profit foundation that holds events for investors.
• Livemint occasionally has good articles and reviews of financial products.
• Forums on Facebook (AIFW), reddit,
• Reputed Investors associations (eg TNIA) - those that are SEBI registered and run investor awareness programs.
• SEBI Registered Investment Advisors - Fee only advisory services

Of course this is not a total endorsement of any of the above, the quality of advice can vary, so one has to use ones own judgement and verify. In general try to separate advice from execution, it is better to pay separately for advice (if needed) than to try to seek information from people who have vested interests in pushing certain products.

[Ithaca]

Originally Posted by Balthazar

Could you guys recommend a few resources to help an absolute beginner (who has just begun earning) get started? A few books start with and learn the ABC's of investing for instance. After understanding the basics, we could rely on ourselves, and make informed decisions.

@Balthazar, I would advise you to subscribe to valueresearch dot com and read their forum posts. If one has time, do read all the threads on the posts. There are a lot of informed investors who give valuable inputs in those threads.

Nowadays I am watching videos made by this lady - CA Rachana Phadke Ranade. She explains everything in simple terms. I am sure there are a lot more Indian YouTubers who dispense valuable information. Value Research also has its Q&A on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn7KWR9EOGQ

Here is ValueResarch Q&A with Mr Dhirendra Kumar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKHSd6Riq4M

[MegaWhat]

Thanks for such an informative post!
From my experience, the RMs are under tremendous stress to sell things -sometimes when they themselves aren't okay with it. In one instance, I had gone to HDFC to open an account, but was saddled with an additional account, even when that was not my original intention. I used to be a patsy when it came to getting influenced by salesmen. But by the end of the same day, we realised it was unnecessary and followed up to cancel the account opening before it was finalised. The RM ended up at our house in tears, holding our feet and begging to not cancel the account. She was a widower it seems and was barely scraping through and needed to meet targets for that month before putting in her papers. Now I'm not sure if that was true or not, but we agreed to close the account at the start of the next month (which was just a couple of days away) and it got done.

The second time was when we were planning to buy a house. HDFC again. On a phone call to enquire about the interest rates, we were assigned a particular RM. When we went to the property of choice, we ended up talking to another RM. The deal was done at the property with that particular RM. Funnily, both of them had the same name and I thought I was probably talking to the same guy. But once the paperwork had begun, a mad competition erupted between the two. I asked their manager to sort it out as I had to get the deal though. The manager instead asks me to take the call on which RM would I prefer. Ended up going with the guy linked to the property. But the internal tiff I saw was just sad. Once that went through, along came the insurances and the ULIPs. This time I held on to a firm NO.
I think it comes down to that - saying NO and doing your own study.

[shebin]

Originally Posted by Thebat

These points were to give you a glimpse of what happens behind the scenes in a broking house as personally experienced by me. I left the organisation as my conscience did not permit me to missell products to my clients. There are a lot of RM's who genuinely try to advise their clients on their requirements but are constantly hounded by the organisation to fulfill their insurance and equity quotas. The platform of ICICI Direct is excellent and for an equity buy and hold player, it makes a lot of sense due to its ease of use.

I work for one of the top real estate companies in India. We too face this concern of selling against conscience/misselling. The insurance style does'nt work for properties but unfortunately most of the companies are tagging those lines expecting they can sell more by cold calling and misselling and fake commitments.The idea is to some how get the booking amount and then don't respond on commitments.Many clients give up due to lack of time or frustration.I try my level best to give the right and required information and maintain long term relation with my clients. Have seen lot of painful instances of misselling and related complications where the buyer suffers hugely.Sales people are verbally abused and tortured to achieve their targets which adversely affect the experience of the buyer and may result in huge financial implications for the buyer later.

[Theyota]

Originally Posted by shebin

I work for one of the top real estate companies in India. We too face this concern of selling against conscience/misselling. The insurance style does'nt work for properties but unfortunately most of the companies are tagging those lines expecting they can sell more by cold calling and misselling and fake commitments.The idea is to some how get the booking amount and then don't respond on commitments.Many clients give up due to lack of time or frustration.I try my level best to give the right and required information and maintain long term relation with my clients. Have seen lot of painful instances of misselling and related complications where the buyer suffers hugely.Sales people are verbally abused and tortured to achieve their targets which adversely affect the experience of the buyer and may result in huge financial implications for the buyer later.

Try to run as far far away as possible from such employer. Take the earliest possible chance. It is neither going to do you any good in short term or long term.

I am fortunate to work for an employer who is relatively very conservative in marketing our products. Historically we have been dependent on our quality and reliability of our products to sell. In recent years, with competition increasing, we are more aggressive in marketing and selling, but there is no question of up selling. Any borderline discussion of up selling is immediately put down and people may be even punished seriously for doing something like that. I have my good and bad days at work, but at the end of the day I can talk with pride about my employer with my child and family.

[rst89]

Thanks for collating all experiences from different quarters of India in this thread.

Reminds me of an incident few months back where a RM of Kotak Life used to come and sit in my dad's clinic for hours pressurising him to buy a policy. Should my dad treat patients or attend them?

In the end, the sold him a ULIP. He hesitantly told me bought ULIP where at that very instant I wrote a letter to cancel policy. In that letter, I wrote that he has been mis-sold the policy and made him sign and gave it to main branch of Kotak. Since it was less than 15 days the policy was issued, we got roughly every paisa of dad's hard earned money.

The Kotak life unit was attached to a local bank and the RM caught the attention since my parents has lots of FD in the bank. I just sometimes feel pity on crores of money stuck in ULIP and what not..

[VKumar]

Originally Posted by Thebat

The whole purpose a meeting is prefered is to push insurance

Not just the RMs, even the BMs also do the same. Recently my father applied for a housing loan with HDFC (Dream house loan I would say), and the manager was in a mood of selling a big ticket insurance right from day 1. But my father clearly denied the same and claimed that you have FDs worth more than the loan itself, we have our good term insurance, why shall we buy one? We are doing a favor to the manager by adding to his loan portfolio, by giving him FDs etc, why shall we even consider such demands (Note: I haven't said request), so the manager delayed the process a bit. Later on, we took the loan from SBI, transferred the account and shifted all our deposits to SBI, and then we saw this manager and even his 2 level higher ups following up like anything.

After having been miss-sold multiple times in past (Heck, these guys once sold us 2 ULIPs on the name of FD, initially it wasn't even our phone numbers on the form, and the bonds never reached us till we started account closure and ULIP surrender procedure). We are now extra cautious on the same.

My belief is that; I have seen the same people who had shamelessly lied to us (Now also, but now we catch them and ask them to immediately leave the house respectfully), when the same set of rot is going up the industry in higher managerial positions, they have miss-sold at their time, now they put the pressure on their juniors to repeat the same.

I left the organisation as my conscience did not permit me to missell products to my clients.

Even I got placed in one well known BFSI organization after my PGDM, luckily, my role had no customer interaction and direct selling, but I could sense that multiple people coming into sales management roles from the tier 2 B schools were actually leaving for the same reason. They were clear that they won't miss-sell; and management was clear that they want only money - no matter how that comes into the system.

Even recently when I went to a HDFC branch for a locker, the assistant manager told me that we need to make a 40k worth investment for the locker. When I denied and went to manager, he took my number and told me that I can call in 2 hours, I called and he denied that no locker is available. Next morning, I called from another number and gave him my father's account number and asked "this is my account, can I get a locker today itself", the same guy was like "sir please come, every size is available - it is all for you only, etc". When I reached an hour later, the face of the manager was worth a glimpse. Now he was in a situation, where he knew that I can invest; but out of the embarrassment due to his act the previous day, he couldn't ask for it.

[ritz3645]

Years back father had an FD in HDFC. Year end he got a TDS deduction inspite of filling 15H form. 15H form duly signed was collected from home by HDFC person but was never put on file, so TDS got cut. The agent who came to collect 15H form was selling a free CC/DC or something, but since he didn't make any sale he never submitted the given 15H form. Took father to branch removed every single rupee & ended the relationship the very same day.

I never bank with Indian Private banks.

[veyron_head]

Thanks OP for this post. I have been investing in MF for about 10 yrs and have incrementally increased my monthly outflow to what is now a significant % of my income. My good returns in one fund is almost always negated by a negative return in another, resulting in paltry overall returns. While i cant blame the person who sold me this since i know them personally, i think the RMs are themselves brainwashed into thinking how good MFs are. Any investor i have asked doesnt seem to have a favorable opinion of MF. Thinking of closing everything and going back traditional investments like real estate and gold.

[Ph03nix]

What is the alternative?

I have a different perspective on this. I will prefer these private banks any day over our PSU's.

Information on financials and products has been available online for a long time now > 10 years. Unlike IT, banking fundamentals don't change often. It doesn't take much effort to understand the basics of what's good for you and not.

Yes, there is a lot of upselling and crony tactics used to sell, but if you are firm and know how to say NO, the hassle free service these banks offer is unmatched in the PSU world. Take the privilege banking from ICICI as an example. I have never had to spend more than 10 minutes for any bank work, whilst the general counters have large queues. I have found the staff generally keen to get the work done, even though it serves as a conduit to the final push for a ULIP policy. But I can always say no and move out.
As against this I had to make 5 round trips to open a joint account in a SBI branch nearby and consequentially a home loan from them. Mind you none of this was due to lack of documentation or credit history. It all depended on the mood of the lady at the counter and what she had for breakfast in the morning or how close it was to lunch time, or if she was sleepy after having a heavy lunch. I do not associate myself with any PSU banks, and never will. It was only the benefit of the overdraft loan and significant financial benefit that drew me in.

The less said about the financial health of these PSU's the better.