Big Banks
My day was upended by a conference call last night. My local bank branch manager, patched me in with a supervisor from his bank’s mortgage processing department. Three of us discussed, briefly and quite intensely the status of a certain mortgage application. You probably know from experience that one of the critical dimensions of buying a home is securing the mortgage. The mortgage closing is when buyer and seller, or their realtor representatives meet in order to sign the documents transferring the title of ownership, and one or more checks, duly signed, change hands, etc.. Naturally all of this is done under the supervision of attorneys for each of the parties. No question buying property and a house is no small matter. Human nature being what it is, the accretion, layer upon layer of bureaucratic precaution has brought us to this place.
As I was saying, subsequent to yesterday’s early evening conference call, I did not sleep well. I felt dissonance between the pleasant words, the customer friendly overtures, —and the machine-like approval process of a ponderous organization. Only so much information was divulged, not nearly enough to put my mind at ease…. And that’s how the three way conversation went.
I’ll get over it. Some hours of manual labor cleared my head, and the world once again is a spacious and brighter space.
Make no mistake about it though. Size involves efficiencies of scale, but primarily for the enterprise, not for the customer. Information cannot be as freely shared, nor work as customized to the individual need as is standard practice with smaller organizations, with less need to standardize their procedures.
And so it goes.
