Devil in Pinstripes (28 page)

‘So what are we saying? Who is screwing us – our own staff or the collection agencies?’

‘Both. Aditya, on a small scale this can be occasionally done by collection agencies on their own to meet higher performance benchmarks, but a large scale bastardisation of this cannot be done without the local management of NFS being involved. As you know, a higher credit loss gets noticed and hundreds of questions are asked by people at all levels, but a higher cost often gets ignored and is also easy to justify. This process which we call as funding in our collections world, cannot be going on without the explicit concurrence of the local management of NFS.

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Aditya. I checked the bills of the collections agencies for the last three months. Normal bills are raised by collections executives and signed off by Raman Bhaskar. Only the bills for Shoba Debt Recovery Services have been raised by Raman Bhaskar and approved by Nirmal. Why? Raman Bhaskar has a signing authority of Rs 30,00,000. Why has he followed a different process for bills that are within his limit, but include the “Professional Services Rendered” line and got them approved by Nirmal? There can be only one explanation. He did not want many people to know about this arrangement. Between him and Nirmal they stuck a deal and executed the entire funding plan.’

‘OKAY.’

‘Our collections costs in Hyderabad also prove this Aditya. They are rising day-by-day. We are paying more for collecting the same amount of money from the customers. Even the telecalling that the central team has now done, throws up a large concentration of customers in Hyderabad, who have said that they haven’t paid their dues, despite our systems reflecting their instalments having been received. If the customers didn’t pay them, where did they come from? Who paid them? Clearly in most cases the agency paid for it and has billed us. Or the collections agent paid it under the faith that he will be able to collect it later from the customer. In the later instance, he makes his incentives and over the next thirty days keeps the pressure on the customer and collects the money from him.’

‘Didn’t our month-end audit catch this malpractice?’

‘That’s the screw up Aditya. I spoke with both Nirmal and Raman Bhaskar. Nirmal conducted the audits and Raman helped him with the audits. Have you met them Aditya?’

‘I know Nirmal very well. Have I met Raman? The name does ring a bell.’

‘Raman was a star branch manager. He even made it to your annual high performer convention.’

‘What’s he doing in collections?’

‘That’s the question I had too. Long back this guy used to be in collections in Raipur. We had detected an issue with repossessed cars. At that time, we sacked the branch manager, but gave Raman the benefit of doubt, because he was too junior. Gowri had vehemently argued his case and agreed to take him into the NFS branch world. Raman owes his job today to Gowri. At various times since then, Gowri had been pushing for his move back to collections. When I was in India, I had resisted taking him in collections because I was not convinced of the guy’s integrity. I had even spoken about this to Gowri. Looks like after I left and before Amit firmly took over, in the cusp period, they pushed him in. Amit would surely not have taken him. But by the time he came in, the deed was done.’

‘He is Gowri’s guy? In collections? How much better could it get?’

‘Oh yes. Raman is Gowri’s guy. As if you don’t know Aditya! Gowri has a habit of ensuring that he has his guy in every team. This way he ensures that he gets to know what’s going on and is able to act well in time. This also ensures that his political agendas are pushed through. Amit would not have hired him. I am sure. Specifically knowing that he was Gowri’s guy?’

Aditya opened his right eye, looked at Manish and gave him a wry smile. ‘I know. They hate each other, don’t they?’

‘Yes they do. However, coming back to Nirmal and Bhaskar, when confronted with this data, they have confessed that they were indulging in managing books through funding of delinquent accounts.’

‘What the fuck? Why didn’t you sack them immediately?’ Aditya suddenly became agitated. Staff frauds were something he couldn’t stand. Integrity issues had to be dealt with firmly.

‘I will come to it. There is more to the story. In any case I have their signed confessions and they might put in their papers tomorrow. They know that they have been exposed.’

‘You are scaring me now.’

‘If I was you, I would be scared too. Before I elaborate, let me come to Sunder.’

‘Who is Sunder? Haven’t heard this name earlier.’

‘Sunder is the collection agent, who was following up with Tulsiram for the payment. He claims that Tulsiram made his payment every month and that he promptly deposited the payment with NFS month after month. I checked the receipt book . . . and that’s where the problem is. The receipts supposedly issued to Tulsiram for the payments collected in cash for the months of September, October and November, do not have his signature. Forget Tulsiram’s signature . . . the receipts for November and October are blank . . . and even the customer’s copy was in the receipt book itself. It was never given to Tulsiram.’

‘OKAY, what does that prove? Don’t go around in circles, come to the point.’

‘Aditya, when I saw that none of the receipts had Tulsiram’s signature and the receipts for November and October were blank, I dug deeper. I stumbled upon the fact that there is an ongoing contest for the collection agents, the tagline of which was – Money Lao Dollar Pao. The incentives paid out in this contest are in cash and are significant. A guy like Sunder, stands to make over 12,000 a month, just on achieving hundred percent of the stretch contest goals.’

Aditya nodded.

‘Surprisingly, Sunder has exactly achieved hundred precent of his target in all the three months. In every month, he has achieved his target on the last day of the month and has exceeded his set target by one payment, i.e. he has collected one payment more from customers, than what his contest target was. Quite an eerie coincidence, isn’t it?’

‘Indeed,’ Aditya agreed.

‘On 30 September he got in four payments from customers. In the last days of October and November, he brought in four and three payments respectively – payments which helped him reach his target. Tulsiram is one of those guys whose payments came in on the last day of each of the preceding three months. I myself called the ones whose payments Sunder had brought in on the last day of November. Well, two of them, except Tulsiram. And both said that they did not pay any instalment to Sunder or any other agent of NFS. I did these calls myself and so I can speak with a fair bit of credibility.’

‘What does this mean? These accounts are also being “funded”.’

‘The incentive Sunder has made in these three months adds up to Rs 36,000. He has been a very smart cookie. He waited till the last day to figure out the shortfall between his target and his actual performance. For example, on 30 September he realised that he was short of his targets by four customer payments. He decided to pay those from his own pocket. The four payments he has made on 30 September are the following.’

And he opened his laptop and brought up a spreadsheet on his screen. Aditya glanced at it. It had four names on the screen

Ramaji Reddy – Rs 2200

Gopal Kanji – Rs 1800

B.V. Sastri – Rs 2450

Tulsiram – Rs 1979

‘The amounts are the instalment amounts for these customers.

These four instalments add up to Rs 8,429. Sunder paid these instalments on his own. Well, who wouldn’t? In return for this payment from his pocket, he hits the contest target and makes 12,000 in return. A straight gain of Rs 3,571.

‘Now comes the challenging part. Out of the pool of customers allocated to him for collecting from, how does he select which customers account to pay into? Here Mr Smart Ass picks up on a customer who in his view is a low risk customer, a customer who would eventually on persistent follow up, pay up his dues. In any case Sunder has made his money. If he is able to recover money from these customers on whose behalf he has paid, that would be a double whammy. Tulsiram was one such customer, who features month after month, in Sunder’s list – Sunder has in effect paid Tulsiram’s instalment for all the three months.’

‘Hmm . . . so that’s the story,’ Aditya was buying his view.

‘Sunder didn’t tell Tulsiram that he has paid on his behalf, and kept following up with him for his monies. Since Tulsiram never knew that his instalments had been paid by Sunder, whenever he would get a call from Sunder to pay up, he would presume that the call was from NFS, on account of the bounced instalment cheque.

‘What did Tulsiram’s suicide note say? The recovery agent from NFS demanded three instalments? Right? Tulsiram’s story of NFS following up for three instalments was correct. That’s what he thought. However, it was not us, but Sunder who was following up for his payment. Poor Tulsiram was not even aware that his instalments had been paid.’

‘How sure are you?’

‘I would not say so if I am not sure Aditya. Sherlock Holmes has always been my favourite detective series. For a change, I decided to play him in real life. Remember Jacqueline?’

‘Oh ya! Isn’t she that same chick who almost wrecked your home. The one for whom you nearly left Seema?’

‘Ha ha Aditya. Well tried! I have a squeaky clean reputation as far as women are concerned. You can never nail me in these things. Okay I will go on. You obviously know who I am talking about. She has now moved to Vodafone as head of customer service. Thankfully, Sundar carries a Vodafone mobile. I met Jacqueline and she helped me in pulling out Sundar’s call details. There have been calls and SMS’s from his mobile to Tulsiram’s mobile till as late as 16 December . . . and . . . and . . . Tulsiram died on the 15
^th
. He has rigorously followed up with Tulsiram . . . at times he has even made as many as twelve calls a day.

‘Aditya, Tulsiram’s December cheque has cleared. We were lucky because his salary credit from Marriott got delayed and hence our cheque for his December instalment hit his account around the same time as his salary credit. He didn’t have time to withdraw the money from his account. Given this, he is not a delinquent customer as per our records. His name was not even in the collections list for December. If you think about it . . . there can only be one reason why Sunder has been regularly calling him. Sunder was recovering his own money!’

‘So you are saying Tulsiram was not aware that Sunder had paid his instalments to NFS and was following up for recovery of his payment . . . and that Sunder, in a way was accountable for Tulsiram’s suicide.’

‘In a way, yes.’

‘So we are clean. No one can nail us, right?’

‘No. No one can come back at us or hold us accountable for Tulsiram’s death. We can publically state that Tulsiram is not delinquent with us and hence the question of following up to recover three instalments does not arise at all.’

‘Good.’

‘That was as far as Tulsiram was concerned. There is a bigger problem that we have to deal with in Hyderabad.’

‘And that is . . .’

‘The collections process here sucks. It has been completely manipulated by the collections officers. This is the last quarter of the year. The quarter when performance appraisals happen. Bonuses for staff get decided. Any screw up in the collections process in the last three months of the year influence the portfolio quality and directly the performance rating right up to the top. Hence in any company, the October–December collections performance is very very important.’

‘Why are you telling me this? If I didn’t know this I wouldn’t be where I am?’

‘I didn’t mean it in that manner Aditya. That was not the intent. I got a bit suspicious when I saw the payment receipts for Tulsiram. They were blank. When I saw the receipt book audit process, I freaked. And when I came across the Shoba Debt Recovery Agency bills, it just blew my lid. I also picked a sample of customers whose payments have come in on the last day and telecalled on them. I mentioned this to you earlier.

‘I checked with Nirmal, the guy who has audited the receipt books. It’s clear that he had done it only for an academic purpose. He comes from branch network. Reports into Gowri’s chain of command. The audit report was prepared by Raman Bhaskar and signed off by Nirmal. How can someone do this? What is the sanctity of the audit process?

‘And this Raman Bhaskar . . . he comes with a background . . . with a not so good past. I told you about his relationship with Gowri earlier. When I confronted him with the various audits and the billing issues, he resisted for some time. Gave vague answers, but when I didn’t let go, he agreed to have funded these accounts, through the collections agency. There are many more Shobha Debt Recovery Agencies in Hyderabad alone. This has become a menace in Hyderabad. If group audit gets wind of this, we will be terribly embarrassed. This is a collections malpractice, which is like a termite attack. If not fixed, it will eat up our entire system. This could have been identified and fixed, if only they had a robust audit process. That was not to be. Gowri managed to fix this process through his own guy.’

Aditya suddenly sat up at this comment from Manish. ‘And why do you say that Gowri fixed this process through his own guy?’

‘Gowri pushed Raman Bhaskar into collections in Hyderabad and had his performance on paper audited through Nirmal. Gowri was aware of everything that was going on in Hyderabad. Amit would not have even suspected this because as far as he was concerned an independent channel was auditing the collections performance. And the audit reports were fine. If I was him, given the equation with Gowri, I would have expected Gowri’s man, Nirmal in this case, to go all out and critically examine my team’s performance and try and pick holes in my delivery. If there was anything wrong in collections, then I would have expected Gowri’s team to be the first ones to identify it and create a scene. I would not have backed Gowri to get entangled in this in such a manner.’