Working Among Psychopaths – My Life in Banking

There are people close to me who still don’t understand why I would turn my back on what was a very comfortable living working as a bank manager. There are others who simply can’t comprehend how I could ever have worked in such an industry.

I’ll tell you how. I’d put my lizard brain in gear, leave my principles at the door and play the game until I simply couldn’t do it anymore.

The disturbing thing for me still is that I knew it was a game and I knew I was a fraud practising the dark art of doublethink. How else could I objectively read a memo that said :“ In order to improve our service we are decreasing our frontline staff.”? There were many of those along with the ever-present mantra of we are a sales organisation which led to the inevitable absurdity of me being called a sales manager.

All this Pythonesque deluded stupidity has swum sharply back into focus for me with the news filtering out of the Australian Banking Royal Commission. I’d never really forgotten the soulless, life sucking, miserable existence I'd led as a banker but I had managed to largely forget the details.

Banking sucks but it pays really well once you get your snout in the trough where the bonuses are. I wasn’t a big player by any means but the bonuses I was being paid at the Commonwealth Bank were all gravy representing between 10 and 25% of my annual income. It’s easy to forget that those bonuses are built off the back of ordinary people’s sweat, tears, anxiety and occasionally, blood. When you cut through all the fancy finance speak about margins, ratios, indexes and demographics, banking is parasitical. It creates nothing but leverages profit out of the risks and efforts of others.

During my time in banking the banks were sharpening those parasitical teeth in order to extract maximum revenue from their captive client base. Sales targets, sales activities, cold calling and aggressive cross-selling became the norm. Banking became predatory in nature. The human cost is still being counted.

Most bankers never saw this for one of two reasons.

Many working at the lower levels never see what banking really is. They provide baseline service and effectively perform as cogs in a massive machine that they are hardly aware of. They simply don’t have the awareness or the knowledge to comprehend what they are part of. They are innocent of any crime.

The second group are more interesting quite simply because as individuals they are so boringly normal. While bankers as a group are probably of at least average intelligence, there aren’t too many geniuses amongst their ranks either. My experience with working with bankers is that they are generally mild-mannered, quiet and unassuming. Those who choose to stay within banking naturally rise up through the ranks and they form a middle management base.

These people have generally given up on their childhood ambitions and have made compromises to “fit in” to society. By nature, they like to follow rules and banking has books full of rules that they can cling to. They are useful pawns. They accept and carry out instruction without question. I used to get angry at these people, but I was really no different, just mildly less passive. I have no quarrel with them – they are what they are –bigger cogs in the machine, but cogs nevertheless. There is no fire in their belly, they have no great ambition, other than to cater for their family and they often get confused at where the line between legality and morality lies. By themselves. they are inconsequential and harmless, but their very passivity allows them to be effectively weaponised by a third group.

For every hundred or so of these largely inoffensive, ordinary people there will be one dead set psychopath who absolutely loves the latent power that lies at the very heart of the banking system and can’t wait to get their hands on all the levers. I’ve met these bastards and they make my blood run cold.

They aren’t very smart, but they are driven. It’s amazing how far a little self-interest sprinkled with a willingness to do whatever it takes will take some people. They quantify and measure everything except their own toxicity. They verbally instruct and intimidate but when you ask for a written direction they get someone else to write and sign the memorandum. They’ll throw their own mother under the bus for the next promotion. They get high on the fumes of their own bullshit and they love playing with people’s lives.

They’re still working for the organisation that I left. They’re still preying on people – customers and staff, it makes no difference to them. All that matters is their status and the size of their bonus payment.

When the Royal Commission shit hits the fan they will have their fall guys in place to take the full brunt of it. They won’t be touched. They will have plans and contingencies in place to circumvent any new regulations and will already be planning on how to maximise their next annual bonus.

I’m glad I’m out of it.

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My name is Mark Hodgetts. I’m a freelance writer, eking out a crust writing
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