You are my banker

If you are a business owner I’d like to borrow some money from you this week, if I may? I don’t want to borrow from my bank because they do all those nasty credit checks to determine whether I am, in fact, creditable. Heck, they even go so far as to check my criminal record. Fortunately, being the great person you are, I know that you won’t do that.

The next problem with banks is that they want me to sign all those pesky agreements – most of which I can barely understand. I do know that they will throw all that paper at me in court when they inconveniently demand that I pay them what I owe them. Fortunately you’re a lot less formal, and chances are you won’t ask me to sign anything. And if you do, it is probably a document you got for free from from a mate or from a spunky website like CheapDocs.Com, so the chances of it being much of a threat when exposed to the harsh light of the law are like your TV controller: remote.

And then, of course, there is the question of that surety that real bankers want. How dare they ask me to put my wife and kids at risk? (Writers note: Isn’t it such a joy that I can write that without my worrying about whether you’re a man or a woman because you too can now select a future life partner without any concern about their gender – and that makes this writing task so much easier.)

Anyway, as I was saying before the gender of your wife confused me, I love the fact that you will lend me money without sureties. And, even more, I love that you will finance this loan to me by going to a bank where you will have to fight the credit checks, and you will have to sign the equivalent of 18 Californian Redwood trees in which you promise to pay the bank if I don’t pay – even if it costs your home, your third-born son, and the family retriever. That’s so generous!

And if I don’t pay you (for what I am sure will be really good reasons at the time) then you will pay your banks on my behalf, and you won’t even chase me! (I know this because those few bits of paper you asked me to sign – the equivalent of 3 pine needles – are no better than wetwipes, which you will probably need when you get that first summons.)

I know this isn’t the way you usually think of yourself – as my bank manager – but I want you to know how much I respect you, at least until you fight with me over my tardy payments, and if you do that I am not even going to put your invoice into the hat for my monthly draw.

We don’t see ourselves as bankers, do we? But isn’t that a reality? Whenever I am approached by somebody looking for money for a business, inevitably it is because they are financing their clients. And we accept these clients at face value. (Hint: try and open an account at some of your very own clients and you will get an idea of some of the risks you are currently running.)

I don’t know about you, but I firmly believe that Anglo-American, Telkom, and the various departments of the South African government are probably better able to finance their purchases than you are able to – even though they might be vaguely trustworthy. But most of us are also acting as bankers to a sundry group of bandits whose custom should rather be going to our competitors. (Please don’t shoot this humble messenger before reading this past month’s news!)

There are a variety of methods to finance sales, but by far the best is allowing your clients finance themselves – and gain loyalty points in the process. I suspect that you have not yet implemented a sophisticated loyalty program with pretty cards, low cost flights in 2011, and significant discounts on useful white goods – but their ‘financial’ bankers have. And the easiest way to transfer the financing is to help their other bankers by accepting credit cards. (I know that the local banks charge exhorbitant rates for processing credit cards, but even so I cannot help but feel that it is cheaper than losing your house, the child, and the dog!)