By Jaime Jaramillo Machado
@finanzas.emocionales
Three years ago, Fernando received the typical bank call: “Because you are such a good customer, you have a pre-approved card for five million.”
The card became a portfolio purchase, then a free investment credit and, finally, a fifteen million draft. Fernando wins two million, but receives $1,350,000 after legal deductions and the bank’s fee of five hundred thousand. Gone is the trip with his family, the five million motorcycle is only worth two million and the TV burned the card and he has nothing to fix it with.
This story only has the name of the protagonist in fiction. The latest inclusion report from the Financial Superintendence reveals that 72.6% of adults have at least one banking product. Ten years ago the figure was 50%. We have advanced; however, the low financial education of these new clients worries me, the bank-client relationship is like a toche fight with a ripe guava, guess who is the guava?
How did Fernando get to this situation? Simple, the banking process has not been accompanied by adequate education. The banks say they are pouring millions into their programs. Sadly, these are better for the bank than for the people.
I still don’t see the first telling his clients: “Don’t go into debt to spend, that goes against your financial health”; on the contrary, it encourages them to do so. The only debt we should take on is the one that pays for itself: debt to invest.
When we get the call from the bank, let’s remember that they are making money off of financially illiterate people. This is a matter of training and a more ethical bank. My blood boils when people with money in a savings account or in a CDT at rates that do not even cover inflation, but at the same time have credits where they pay high interest, come to my personalized financial advice. When I show them that the bank is charging them for their money, they run to cancel the loan and find themselves with a speech about the importance of saving or the benefits of having a loan to build a credit history and improve their score.
I ask myself, what better savings than to stop paying high interest?
I propose a more ethical bank, that is consistent, that offers loans to invest and not to spend. That generates economic growth and development for all, not for a few at the expense of the misinformed mass.
What if Fernando had received that call saying: “We know you want to travel with your family. We are going to lend you money to buy an apartment: with what you pay for rent you pay the debt and over time you will have more money to travel”? another would be this story