Who Owns the Client - Part 1

After a successful start in financial sales, I wanted to learn more about my business by gaining experience in a different arena. I applied for, and received, a transfer to the pension department of my large firm. As the pension payments clerk, my main responsibility was to ensure thousands of pensioners from many different backgrounds received their monthly cheques. Or not. I learned that one of the more unpleasant aspects of the job was to claw back payments that had been made to a surviving spouse after a pensioner passed away. Not everyone chose a joint and last survivor option. More on this in a later blog.

You may recall, during the late 1980's, Vancouver was subjected to more than one lengthy postal strike. This caused frustrations for almost everyone, but was felt most keenly by those who relied upon the mail to deliver much needed funds for living expenses. EFT, or electronic funds transfer, was available but looked upon with suspicion by some of our elderly pensioners. I don't believe we had more than 50% of our pension cheques delivered by EFT in those days. Many elderly pensioners relished the opportunity to take a physical cheque down to their bank and chat with the tellers for a few moments while making their deposits. The mail strikes hit them hard.

My job did not require me to take any further action. Pensioners who needed their cheques had been offered EFT in the past and declined. They had the option of coming in and picking up their cheques or paying for a courier to deliver the cheque to their homes. Once these options had been exhausted, I was still left with about 30% of my monthly cheques undelivered to individuals who needed them. My company took no further action; in fact, the pension plans were earning extra interest on the uncashed funds every day. But my conscience couldn't stand it!

These were my pensioners. I spoke with many of them monthly. I knew their names, their kids and grandkids names, where they had worked, what job they had done, etc. I heard about their illnesses, their vacations, marriages, divorces, often things I didn't care to know! I got personally involved even though I would never meet most of them face to face. I had to find a way to get them their cheques.

By now, I knew quite a bit about the operations of a large financial institution, including the fact that each of them had a daily bag of documents, forms, and other mail delivered inter-office via private courier every day. I decided to phone every pensioner who had not received their cheque and ask which bank they dealt with and their account number. I would them hand deliver the cheque to the main Vancouver branch of their bank, usually within close walking distance of my own office, and ask the staff to send the cheque inter-office to the pensioners branch for deposit. Privacy laws would not allow this information to be shared today, but these were different times. I managed to deliver 80% of the cheques I still held on to this way.

So what's the punch line, you ask? It is this: looking out for my pensioners and putting them first did not win me any accolades from my firm. I didn't do it for the praise (although the thanks I received from many clients were heartwarming) but thought there might be some internal recognition for my ingenuity. I was wrong. Not only were my efforts unappreciated, my request to deliver cheques during normal working hours was refused. I did all of this work on my lunch hour each day. I made the mistake of owning the client.