Informality Actually Works

In the first arrival I came to the US, in California, someone from IIE fetching me said to just call her with name. “Is it impolite?” I thought. In fact it was not. Moreover, all professors, teachers and staffs in my university at the time, UC Santa Cruz, also said to just call them by name. This is because the US adopts informality in their culture. Interesting. Different with my country. Indonesia is a country with manner. We usually call teachers, professors, staffs or even our colleagues who we have already known their name with Mr, Ms, or Sir and followed by their name. My country has a culture called East Culture. Every occasion or celebration is celebrated with very formal procedure, culturally and religiously. This might be caused by military influence as most of southeast asian countries were free from colonialism not so long time ago.

Informality in the US is also implemented not only in their daily life, but also in their financial service. One week ago I decided to open my bank account in Chase Bank. I think this is one of the banks in JP Morgan group. I chose Chase because it has many branches in my academic university in Illinois. I heard from my friend if opened a bank account was quite easy, that’s why I went to the bank after school time. I can tell you that in the middle of the process, I just realised that I forgot to bring the letter or statement stating that I am enrolled in St. John University. I thought I was stupid at the time, but after that I knew that I was lucky. 

The first thing I heard when I opened the door was music with country genre. Very informal tone, and I was pretty sure that the music came from 80s or 90s. Very different with electromusic tones we heard now from Eminem, Justin or Rihanna nowadays. Getting into the room with that such kind of music reminded me to enter Sherif’s office in the Cowboy movie ‘Lucky Luke’. Then one lady came to me and asked what she could do. I said “I want to open a checking account”. We went to her room and she inspected all my documents. She said with very informal tone as if we are friend who haven’t met each other for so long. After receiving my social security number, she then asked my US cell number. I said to her that I still don’t have a US number yet. She just smile and say that it’s okay. We catch up again about New York and about the first experience I came here. Very informal. But I knew that she was doing her procedure to know her customer or in financial terms we know it as “Enhance Due Diligence”. In the middle of conversation she looked at my iPod and asked how I can download the apps in my device. I told her simply, “this is an iPod. I need Wifi connection for downloading apps”. That seems as simple question, but I know that she was investigating me related to my previous answer about still having no US number here. If I said I can download the apps in my device without wifi, then it means I probably have a US number simcard in my device. This means I am a lying customer. 

The problem then appeared when I forgot to bring my statement letter. Actually because I have three different addresses: address in my Social Security Number, in my Passport, and St. George Residence. She looked confused and called her manager to help her. The manager came to me and shaked my hand so friendly by calling me “Hello my friend”. Then he catch up with me regarding my study plan. How long I will stay in the US and so forth. I knew, if he found that I’ll only stay here for very short time or only for travelling, I shouldn’t have needed a bank account. I may use that bank account only as a short intermediation to laundry my money and close it when the money laundry is done. Yes, He looked so tedious sometimes, but still friendly. Finally the lady then asked me a favor to translate my passport address into US address. This all seems so friendly. But I knew that this was called as the procedure of “Anti money Laundry and Financing of Terrorism” and they were doing at to me because I came from Indonesia, one of the high risk countries in the procedure of the bank. I am not offended. Not at All. In the financial service, we know that cross border supervision must be conducted to prevent terrorists and criminals use banks as their facility. I even considered myself so lucky. If I brought my statement letter, I would never know how their procedure worked.

The point that I want to emphasise here is how the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) can be implemented in various ways, including the style of informality, without offending its customer. Another thing is how training for officer is very important to implement this kind of style. I believe that not everybody can laugh, smile, laugh and at the same time investigate me very deep. This is very good lesson. In my country, SOP is always implemented very formal so that low income people very hesitate to come to the bank. They are scare of being intimidated by the questions and by the appearance of bankers. This condition leads to the slow motion of financial intermediation, slow economic growth, slow development and slow welfare. Well, informality doesn't always careless, this can be very meticulous. But one thing for sure, they acted very good. =)