Monday, April 14, 2014

What does the Bank and Government have in similarity?

Answer:  DON'T CARE

Banks go after MH370 families – where’s the conscience?

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V Shuman
QUICK TAKE: “A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.” This quote by American poet Robert Frost precisely describes the predicament of those who deal with banks today.

How else would one describe the heartless practice of a bank contacting the family of a passenger on board the still missing MH370, regarding his housing loan?

It was reported that Zamani Zakaria, 56, the father of Mohd Rahman Zamani, 33, had recently received a call from a bank officer, asking the distraught father to get a confirmation letter from MAS stating that Mohd Rahman and his wife, Norli Akmar Hamid, also 33, were on board the Beijing-bound plane, which went off radar on March 8.

Here we have a case of a senior citizen staring at the possibility of having lost not one but two of his family members, and all the bank can think of is getting its hands on cash borrowed. And even that “having lost” part is not conclusive.
Where is the bank’s or at the least the officer’s conscience?

The fate of the 239 people on board remains a question, despite the government announcing that the plane had ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean.

To date, the search party involving more than 20 countries has yet to recover a single fragment of evidence to support the crash claim – keeping alive hope among well-wishers, especially families of those on board.

Couldn’t the bank rely on the passenger manifest which has been made public? Why the need to contact a distraught relative to bug for loans?
Isn’t there a better way to deal with the loan repayment without compounding the affected families’ misery?

It would certainly make sense for banks to wait until there is some sort of closure to the unfortunate incident before acting.

This is especially so if the loan in question is covered by the Mortgage Reducing Term Insurance (MRTA). The policy provides for full settlement of the outstanding balance of the housing loan with the financial institution, in the event of total permanent disability or death of the borrower.

In layman’s terms, if a borrower gets permanently disabled or dies when the loan is still in effect, the bank still gets to recover their borrowing from the insurance company. The affected family still gets to keep their home.
It is widely reported that insurance companies have started contacting the families of the insured passengers on board, offering to pay off their compensations.

Some families have even agreed to receive the payments, with nothing but the government’s “crashed but we can't find wreckage or bodies” claim to go by.
Banks should not give credence to claims that they make profit out of people’s misery.

Customers who pay their loans on time or fully settle their loans are “bad customers” while those who only pay minimum payments on their credit cards and default on their loans are “good customers”, as the banks get to earn more in the form of interest and fines.

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