Click to play videoMumbai: It’s not just your average neighbourhood loan shark who uses strong-arm tactics to recover money. Even collection agencies working for big MNC banks use the same methods with defaulting loan takers.
Amid rising number of harassment cases of loan customers by loan recovery agents, some banks may have woken up to the spate of criticism and resorted to regulatory intervention. But on the ground, the menace of recovery agents continues.
CNN-IBN’s Pranshu Sikka did a spot-check on how these collection agencies operate.
It was a routine advertisement on a newspaper calling collection agents for an MNC bank that set the CNN-IBN on the journey. And when the CNN-IBN reporter went for the interview, it became amply clear that the agency was into more than just reminding people of their dues.
Recovery agency owner: Have you ever been beaten up by anyone?
Reporter: Generally, I have been the one who has beaten up.
Recovery agency owner: But I hope you have abused a lot of people. What would you do if the customer is not at home when you go to collect the payment?
Reporter: I ask whoever is there for the money or just wait till the borrower comes.
Recovery agency owner: Suppose, you have to wait for a long time? What do you do then?
Reporter: Then I would threaten that we would take away whatever I can lay our hands on.
With such credentials, the job could not have been denied. Once inside the agency, the CNN-IBN reporter saw how customers are harassed. If a recovery agent comes home and the loan taker had gone to a doctor, this is what the people at are subjected to.
Abusive phone calls, persistent physical and emotional incursions and unprecedented trauma all are still part of the process adopted for loan recovery.
Recovery agent: Shut up you thief. You can't even make your payments in time. What will I take away? Come to my branch, I will show you. Say that you do not want to make your payments and not that you had gone to the doctor for 15 minutes. I wonder what you spent those 15 minutes doing! I wonder what you are up to with that doctor! Are you an LIC agent or what? Don't make me say further. Just shut up.
Rajyalakshmi Rao, a Member of the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, criticizes such practices of MNC banks. “Even if the judicial process is little slow, that doesn't give a right to the banks to have hooligans to collect loan amounts and harass people,” she says.
“They must go by the process of law and not by the law of the jungle. Our society is still civilised, we cannot use uncivilised means to collect money.”
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