Clients steered towards wrong products: FSU
More than half of bank, insurance and financial services employees have seen customers steered toward financial products they may not have needed, a survey has found.
The Financial Sector Union (FSU) claimed workers were under increasing pressure to sell financial products regardless of customer need, to meet “management-driven performance targets”.
FSU national secretary, Leon Carter (pictured), said the issue lay in the senior ranks of financial services institutions.
“The problem is not the finance sector workforce but the upper echelons of our big banks and insurers, who hold employees to ransom on the condition that they sell more products,” Carter said.
“Woe betide any employee that doesn’t sell the required number of credit cards, loans or whatever the product of the month is; they won’t just miss out on the next pay rise, they might also lose their job,” he added.
The survey found 88 per cent of employees generated a quarter of their take-home pay with sales of financial products, while 51 per cent have observed customers being offered financial products they did not need.
“Finance sector base salaries are not high; employees can’t afford to miss out on bonuses and performance pay – they are under unrelenting pressure to sell,” Carter said.
He added this remuneration model should have been abandoned during the global financial crisis.
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