{"id":22931,"date":"2009-03-09T09:58:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T09:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/blog\/?p=390"},"modified":"2009-03-09T09:58:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-09T09:58:00","slug":"consignas-bancarias-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/consignas-bancarias-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Banking Terms II."},"content":{"rendered":"
A few days ago, a comment was posted on our article entitled \u00abBanking instructions<\/a>\u00bbwhich, given its content, we have chosen to publish and respond to in the form of an article. It is a comment that may well reflect the views of many of our readers. And that is why we wish to give it prominence \u2013 both the comment itself and our thoughts on the matter. This is the text DJ sent us:<\/div>\n
\n

\u00abA very interesting post \u2013 perhaps because of the increasingly clear and numerous clues you\u2019re giving us, and the points you\u2019re drawing our attention to so that we can take them into account when designing our strategy and our \u2018life balance\u2019, as you put it.\u201d.<\/p>\n

If I may, regarding your criticism of the banking sector, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any need for your constant attacks on the sector or your staunch defence of independent advisers. Generalisations have never been a good thing and, in the end, the innocent end up paying for the sins of the guilty. In my view, there are good and bad professionals everywhere, both within and outside the banking sector; you need only look around you, wherever you go. Or were all your classmates equally good? Or are all family offices equally trustworthy? Or have all the teams you\u2019ve been part of been exemplary? If that were the case, there would be no room for differentiation, nor for specialisation, nor for the highly personal contribution that some professionals make.<\/p>\n

Having said that \u2013 and I hope you haven\u2019t found this a chore to read and that you\u2019ll take it constructively \u2013 I would focus more on your strengths \u2013 which you do have, and which you are sometimes keen to show us \u2013 rather than on criticism and the shortcomings of others, in this case the banking sector and all those who work in it or have worked there at some point and have been looking for work for the past few weeks, like so many others. By the same token, we could also talk about the property sector and those who still work or have ever worked in it, and so on with all the sectors where we have at some point witnessed or directly suffered from difficult situations, whether personal or professional. Mobile telephony, perhaps? Rest assured about customers \u2013 both current and potential \u2013 whether acting on their own or with help from others, in the exercise of their freedom; and especially now, given the state of the economy, they surely know how to choose where to go and what sort of adviser is best for them, should the need arise.<\/p>\n

And let one thing be clear. I don\u2019t work in banking, nor have I ever done so, nor do I intend to in the future. It\u2019s simply that I sometimes miss a more constructive attitude, building on what you\u2019re good at, on the contributions you can make, on the value you can add to what already exists and is within the reach of many, and which you\u2019re willing to share selflessly through your blog, as you told us, without needing to pay so much attention \u2013 just the right amount \u2013 to what, in your view, and sometimes quite rightly, others are doing badly. It\u2019s just my opinion.\u00bb<\/p>\n

DJ <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

First of all, I\u2019d like to thank you very sincerely for your comment, DJ. Those of us who write in public forums such as this one need those feedback<\/span> to take a step back and assess whether our readers are actually receiving the messages we intend to send them and believe we are sending. This is not always the case, of course. Sometimes, as in this case, we mean one thing but are understood to mean another. And if the misunderstanding is widespread, there\u2019s no doubt that the error lies with the sender, and rather than a misunderstanding, we should call it poorly explained<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see if I can put our feelings into words. We don\u2019t want to bash the banks or launch constant attacks, let alone defend independent advisers. Among both groups there are good and bad professionals. And some absolutely dreadful ones too. We\u2019re not dealing with a dichotomy between the good (independent advisers) and the bad (bankers) at all. We\u2019re not even aware of having consistently defended the advisers freelance<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We should not confuse independent advisers with multi-family offices, as the former tend to meet only some of the needs associated with a portfolio (financial advisers, estate agents, tax advisers, solicitors, administrative managers, consultants, etc.). As for the multi-family offices,<\/span> I must say that there is a great deal of distortion and many pseudo-professionals who are simply jumping on the bandwagon of simplistic and empty marketing. We have never succumbed to corporatism and have never hesitated to engage in constructive self-criticism. MFOs originating from the banking sector mostly fall prey to the same errors and shortcomings as private banks: a lack of independence and a disregard for, or failure to provide competent attention to, non-financial assets, as well as non-banking services. For their part, MFOs originating from law firms tend to suffer from the opposite shortcomings, namely: an overemphasis on legal services with unnecessarily large and expensive, bloated structures; and a lack of competent attention to other types of assets such as corporate, property or financial assets, although the latter are often pseudo-covered by recruiting staff from the banking sector, to which they remain closely tied and spiritually<\/span> Most of them are linked. Personally, I prefer MFOs that have evolved from SFOs (Single Family Offices), that is to say, multidisciplinary professionals who have previously managed the wealth of a single family and who have now extended their activities and services to a professional firm that accepts and serves multiple clients with medium and lower levels of wealth. This background means that commercial considerations can, in certain circumstances, be set aside in this type of firm. We are aware of a few such firms in Spain, and we count ourselves amongst them. In our specific case, we also offer the creation ad hoc<\/span> from Single Family Offices \u00abturnkey\u2019 <\/span>\u00bbon an ad hoc basis' for larger estates that do not yet have their own SFO.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As for the banking sector, I\u2019ll tell you that there are some truly outstanding, ethical and honest professionals working there. But we mustn\u2019t forget that they work towards one overriding and primary objective: The commercial interests of the organisation that pays their salary and will help them progress financially and professionally over time.<\/span> Good, competent and honest professionals can never put their clients\u2019 interests before those of the organisation they work for. We could say that they will only look after their clients\u2019 interests in a wholly secondary manner, always subject to the bank\u2019s interests.<\/span> The greater the satisfaction provided to the customer, the more customers the bank will have, but without in any way neglecting the operating profit per customer. In other words, there is no point in having many customers if they do not generate profits for the bank. And it is under this fundamental principle that all the corporate structures and commercial mechanisms within a bank operate. The benchmarks<\/span> The minimum sales targets that bank staff are required to meet have been, and continue to be, stifling, and are never compatible with the customer\u2019s interests. The question is: what can a banking professional\u2019s ethics and honesty achieve under such pressure? A lot<\/span>. In other words, it can either maintain its integrity or succumb to indiscriminate commercialisation and the pursuit of personal career progression within the organisation. If a banking professional generates greater profits and achieves better results than their colleague, the bank will reward them with higher financial incentives and they will rise further up the organisational hierarchy. It is a perverse system (like so many others) in which management positions are attained by those who have been able to generate greater profits for the organisation, and the cycle repeats itself and feeds into a negative feedback loop <\/a>It is clear. We do not wish to criticise any banking professionals; we simply wish to highlight that, in most cases, their interests only coincide with those of their clients by pure chance. And from our position as Multi-FO, we see the terrible consequences suffered by those who have placed their trust solely in them, particularly in times as difficult as these.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We will rarely find a relationship win-win<\/span> between banks and their customers. And the proof is that, whenever we intervene \u2013 and I mean whenever \u2013 this relationship improves in the customer\u2019s favour in the short term. In the medium and long term, a genuine relationship is usually established as well win-win,<\/span> since when the bank accepts that it will earn less from that customer, it is usually compensated by an increase in volume. In other words, the bank will change \u00abmass-based rates<\/span>\u00ab, as our clients see their wealth grow and\/or transform, leading to an increase in their financial assets, even in the short or medium term. When banking professionals come to understand this \u2013 and also our role as financial advisers \u2013 they relax, and working together becomes much more pleasant and productive for both parties: the client (financial adviser) and the bank. In many cases, they open up off the record<\/span> enviing our work in a healthy sort of way. Hats off to these honest and competent banking professionals \u2013 there are plenty of them out there. It\u2019s a pleasure to work with them, despite the insurmountable barriers that separate the nature of their work from ours.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Unfortunately, other bankers are simply incapable of understanding our work, regardless of whether they make an effort to do so (or not). Their personal background and professional bias are far too removed from the concepts that a financial adviser handles, or ought to handle. As you will appreciate, in many cases mediocrity and\/or commercial short-sightedness prevent some bankers from moving away from their tendency to squeeze their clients, and they never come to see us as productive partners or representatives of the clients. It is in these cases \u2013 which occur more frequently than would be desirable \u2013 that we tend to find dramatic situations<\/a>. Our firm handles many cases that go even beyond a lack of ethics and honesty on the part of banks. Perhaps it is our own professional bias \u2013 the result of what we see on a day-to-day basis \u2013 that leads us to write in an excessive, sweeping and even unfair manner, denouncing malpractice and cases that really get under our skin. We apologise for this.<\/span> We simply aim to ensure that our readers remain vigilant and realise that these things happen every day. We constantly see poor choices being made when it comes to advisers, both within and outside the banking sector (and, of course, people pay for this service; otherwise, the choice is typically made by a third party and is essentially unrelated to, or even contrary to, the investor\u2019s interests \u2013 with the exception of purely philanthropic advice, of course). As you quite rightly say, \u00abin exercising their freedom\u00bb, some made the wrong choice, and as a result the current difficult economic climate has wiped out much of the wealth they had just a year or two ago<\/span>. <\/span>It\u2019s by no means easy, and we simply aim to help ensure that the cases we constantly come across are nothing more than regrettable exceptions in the future.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>DJ, I\u2019d like to reiterate my thanks for your comment, as it allows us to understand what we actually convey, rather than what we think we convey. I sincerely hope that we have taken this opportunity to clarify matters and apologise for the excesses committed in our eagerness to expose practices that should have been nipped in the bud and which should never have occurred in the first place.<\/p>\n

P.S. We wanted to illustrate this article with a few jokes about financial advisers<\/span>, to take the edge off things a bit and have a laugh at ourselves.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hace unos d\u00edas lleg\u00f3 un comentario a nuestro art\u00edculo titulado \u00abConsignas bancarias\u00bb que por su contenido hemos preferido publicar y responder en forma de art\u00edculo. Se trata de un comentario que quiz\u00e1 represente la opini\u00f3n de bastantes de nuestros lectores. Y por ello queremos darle visibilidad, tanto al comentario como a nuestra reflexi\u00f3n al respecto. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categorizar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}