God also must take a number

I tried to persuade one of our clients not to do it, but they INSISTED on opening an account with the local bank that I already have an account with. Despite 2 entire emails where I said "Don't do it! Yawl be sorry!" in some obscure obfuscated CYA legal mumbo-jumbo, they wrote back and were extremely clear that yes, we note your comments but we would still wish to open a corporate account with DBS.

So I took a deep breath and delegated the horrible nail-scraping-across-keyboard-kill-me-now task to someone else who ended up spending 1.5 hours at DBS' main branch getting the account opened. To quote the someone else - you could fly to Jakarta and back in that amount of time.

And can you beat this - even if your ass and all your identifying and supporting documents in original form are planted in front of the officer in the MAIN BRANCH of DBS, and you're holding in your hot little hands a cheque for the minimum amount, it will still take 2 whole working days to get the account number. Seriously. They have to go and slay the Godzilla and bring back its head or something before their computer can spit out a set of 10 numbers which will be the account number. All those computers and dedicated account officers in the main branch of the largest bank in Singapore, and it still takes 2 working days. Painful? Yes. But tolerable.

Then our client representative flies in from Tokyo especially to do 1 thing, and that is to change the bank signatory to himself. Presents himself at the main branch again, with identification and supporting documents in original form. How long does it take for them to change the signatory from Person A to Person B?

It takes 10 working days.

Why does it take 10 working days?

It's the Internal Procedure. Never mind that in less than 10 working days, a person can travel around the world and come back - for the 1 sheet of signatory instructions to make its way through all the correct inboxes and outboxes in DBS, it will take 10 working days. Does their account management team work underwater? Are they like deep sea divers working 10 leagues under the sea, where if they move too fast, nitrogen bubbles will form in their blood and they will die? Are the people in the account management team slow of mind?

I thought the client asked a rather pertinent question, and that was, well, here I am at the Main Branch of DBS, and you have all these computers and I have all my original documents here. Why can't you do it now?

We can't do it here at the Main Branch. It's all done through our processing side in Chai Chee. If you want things done faster, maybe you can go to Chai Chee yourself, but no promises that it can be done faster. At this point, I thought about the 4 months I waited for my internet banking token and wanted to tell the client, yes, no promises that it can be done faster.

To put things in perspective, this is a client with more than US$20 million ready for deposit into the account. They picked Singapore to set up their holding company because everyone says we are efficient. In fact we claim loud and clear to be a first class financial and banking centre. DBS is the largest bank in Singapore. We are at their Main Branch with all of the documents they need to change the signatory. What the hell did we do wrong? Why does it take 10 working days to process? How can I explain to the clients why we had to wait 1.5 hours to change the signatory, and it still cannot be done on the same day or even the day after? How can I explain to the client why with US$20 million in their account, they still have no dedicated customer service officer, and have to take a queue number at the bank just like the next guy (e.g. me) with S$2,000 in the account? Does God have to take a number too, if he wants to use DBS?

I am embarrassed and fed up. I told clients to use OCBC and they didn't. Do you know the account opening officer will come to your office to provide personalised service, I said. These people are actually interested in your business, I told them. DBS will just tell you to take a queue number and sit down.

Towards the tail end of the 1.5 hours, the client looked at me sheepishly and said, it appears we may have made a mistake choosing this bank. It was all I could do not to stand up and scream.