Personal Finance Advice

Some financial institutions have relatively quick turnover rates, so this means that there is only so much training a bank or credit union may give a new employee.  The employee will learn the basics needed to perform job functions, but as far as other knowledge, this is usually acquired as on the job training.

There are certainly some banks and credit unions that offer extensive training to employees, but this isn’t the case with all of them.  When a new employee graduates from training and starts working, he might be jumping into a situation where he doesn’t fully understand everything he needs to know to be an effective financial representative.  The problem arises when new employees are reluctant to ask questions because they don’t want to seem like they don’t understand their jobs.  This translates into big trouble when a customer asks a question that the employee doesn’t really know the answer to.

Keep in mind that this is not the norm.  Most employees at financial institutions will either know the answer to your question, or will instead find out how to get the answer from someone else. Unfortunately, there are a few representatives who would rather make up an answer instead of admitting that they don’t actually know the answer.  This can be a huge problem if the question you’re asking is regarding something that can have an impact in your finances. 

So how can you tell when you’re talking to a financial representative who really doesn’t have a clue about the answer to your question, but is trying to feign knowledge? If the representative is talking to you face-to-face you might be able to tell by looking at body language, but when the conversation takes place over the phone you’ll need to pay attention to some subtle clues.

A pause. There is nothing wrong with a representative pausing to collect his thoughts, but if the pause is a little too long, or if the representative is stumbling over words, he may not actually know the answer at all.

A response that is too good to be true. If the representative gives you an answer that sounds too great to be right, like telling you there is no fee for something that there usually is a fee for, then it may not be true.

A response that doesn’t make any sense. If a representative’s response simply doesn’t make any sense, and she isn’t able to make it clear, then it may be inaccurate.

Resistance to getting a second opinion. If you ask to speak to another representative or a manager in order to ask for clarification and the representative puts up a great deal of resistance then you can assume there is a reason for it.

If you get the feeling that you aren’t getting an accurate answer from your representative then speak to a different representative or a manager.  Trust your instincts and don’t trust information when it doesn’t seem to come from a reliable source.