Differences between local bank and foreign bank

1. Local bank took at least two weeks to get back to you with a proposed financing rate tailored to your requirements. Foreign bank needed less than two hours

2. If you request something out of standard practise, say Overdraft at BLR+0.75% the officer will first raised his eyebrow, then stuttered to say that the request will be brought into loan committee meeting next week. Foreign bank officer said, "Sure madam, but there will be a locked in period of 5 years". By the way, the local bank loan committee will of course said no.

3. Asked the local bank officer for his email address and you'll get an incredulous look again. A foreign bank officer will point to his email address at his namecard and said " Email me if you need any clarification or you can also buzz me at my YM. Id is xxxxx"

4. Mentioned any feature about business ebanking to a local bank and you'll get answers like "Umm..ugh...actually..no..really...the mgmt said the features are not safe enough...you know lah..so many hackers on the net so we decided not to develope them" Foreign bank will replied with "Sure ma'am the features has been in used even before the internet banking came to Msia. We can syncronise the features to intergrate with your back end ERP system"

5. Asked the local bank officer " Can I place REPO?" The answer " Cannnnn....our rate is the best in the country wannnnn" Then asked again " Can I place Repo from our accounting system which we will connect to your e banking facility without any hardcopy but with full audit trail and the amount is pooled from our various subsidiaries current accounts all over Msia which is to be disbursed back into respective accounts upon maturity?" You will definitely get a stunned silence for an immediate answer. The definite answer will come to you three weeks later in a form of very formal full page letter just to say NO. Repeat the same question to a foreign bank and you'll get this reply "Yes madam, we are able to do that with a minimal fee. We can also do fund sweeping between different accounts for any length of period. How many currencies are we talking about here?"