With the numerous complaints of the tactics used by banks to do “financial planning”, I thought it would be good knowledge when advising customers, to experience these bank advanced selling techniques first hand myself. So, I decided to pay a “mystery shopping” visit with a close layman friend who was indeed keen to take up a savings or investment plan, depending on what they had to offer. I sat quietly beside without interjecting my opinion, or affecting the sales process.

Bank A

The staff seemed pretty new as he was unfamiliar with the forms and was disorganized in the sales process. He did go through the risk profiling and after determining that my friend was “Balanced”, he recommended a Unit Trust. He was quick to highlight that there is a promotion of free gifts for investment amount of $50k and higher for a riskier fund that was recently launched.

He ......