Why I resigned from Southern Bank

Twenty years. It has been 20 years since June 2001 when I decided to sever all employment ties with Southern Bank and exit the banking industry. It has also been 20 years of keeping quiet about this. But 20 years is a good time to reflect. Time does help to tone down your verbal delivery a little. 

At the end of that month in 2001, I threw in my letter of resignation and left the Kulim branch immediately as I had accumulated more than enough annual leave. I didn't have any regrets leaving Southern Bank but I did agonise leaving the rest of my colleagues at the branch with no notice at all and having to carry on with the burden of running the Deposits Department there.

But it had to be done. I had reached a point where I could no longer tolerate working in an environment antithema to everything we built at Ban Hin Lee Bank, the entity that Southern Bank swallowed up in a grand national banking consolidation plan envisioned by the federal government. Maybe it was a good thing altogether but in this particular case, the process was carried out very inefficiently. 

For one thing, the work culture in these two organisations, central to one of the 10 mergers he banking industry, were worlds apart and very little was done to assimilate the two cultures. It was a matter of take it or leave it as far as Southern Bank was concerned. (See note below.) The working condition at Ban Hin Lee Bank was excellent and as much as we respected our customers, we paid equal attention to the staff and their welfare. 

Facilities were excellent too. Ban Hin Lee Bank had one of the most advanced computerised systems in the country to serve their their customers at the front end. Not so the antiquated system from Southern Bank which the merged entity had to adopt and adapt. It was like a step backwards into the stone age. During the six months until 30 Jun 2001, I recall only one one-hour briefing session to inform the Deposits Departmental heads on their expectations when the Southern Bank system would replace the Ban Hin Lee Bank Branchview system in totality.

Imagine the groping around the dark when 1 July 2001 arrived. Everyone at the former Ban Hin Lee Bank branches were unprepared and they floundered. Service slowed down to a snail's pace. The situation at the beginning of the month did not help. This was normally the busiest time for any Ban Hin Lee Bank branch but customers would be cleared off efficiently. Now, with an inept computer system, the queues at the counters led beyond the doors of the branches. Staff had to forego their lunch and continue attending to the customers. Not only that, closing up the branch turned later and later and it was not uncommon to reach home way after 9pm.

This situation did not improve for months -- definitely more than a year -- and at the end of each day, the daily accounting and trial balancing of the banking operations became messier and messier. Accounts could not balance and Suspense entries had to be passed almost every day. Reconciliation of these unbalanced entries would be attempted another day when time permitted. 

Faced with this seemingly unsolvable problems, anyone would feel discouraged. I was greatly discouraged and by May, I had decided to find an alternative employment. One opportunity came along in the middle of June and by 1 July 2001, I had assumed the position of Content Manager at JobStreet.com

Note: When the two organisations were merged into one, almost all the senior management personnel from the Head Office of Ban Hin Lee Bank were offered correspondingly senior management positions at the merged Southern Bank head office but one by one within a year or two, many of them had resigned. The question remained whether they would have left if they had been treated as well as they should.