Last Updated on February 20, 2022 at 9:27 pm
On Sep 24th 2019, the RBI placed Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank under directions due to “weak financial health”. The withdrawal limit was first only Rs. 1000. Amidst confessions of fraudulent accounts to hide NPAs to the tune of Rs. 4,355 crores, the RBI, has subsequently increased the withdrawal limit to Rs. 25000 on Oct 3rd 2019 and then to Rs. 40,000 on Oct 14th due to pressure from depositors. Sanjay Gulati, whose family has about Rs. 90 lakh in deposits with PMC died the same day due to heart failure.
At the time of writing this article, there are four more victims due to PMC bank fraud. The most recent, Bharati Sadarangani, again heart attack, and this time the family had, hold on to your chairs, 2.5 crores worth of deposits in the bank!
According to a press release by the bank, “the financial position of the bank has been substantially impaired due to fraud perpetrated on it by certain persons” and with the Rs. 40,000 withdrawal limit, “ about 77% of the depositors of the bank will be able to withdraw their entire account balance”.
With Rs. 11,000 crores of depositor money, the Oct 14th RBI directive was due to the pressure from protesting depositors. Sanjay Gulati and his father were among them. When something like this happens, it is inevitable that we ask, “why did they put so much money in one bank and that too a co-operative one?”, “what if it happens to us?
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The problem is, we (including our regulators and the government) are always reacting. Instead of being pro-active. The what if it happens to us question should be considered before trouble strikes. What can we learn from these episodes besides the usual do not pull all your eggs in the same basket aka concentration risk? Regular freefincal author Srivatsan writes about lessons from the Sanjay Gulati story.
This is a guest post by regular freefincal contributor Srivatsan. His most famous pieces are:
- Forget the next Infy; Can you identify the next Satyam? He also is responsible for the Earnings Power Box Stock Evaluation tool
- The more recent viral hit: Forget Buffettisms/Mungerisms: try these 2000-year-old personal finance tips!
- Ten Amazing Similarities between Poker, Stock Markets and Life.
- Are you a DIY investor? Be careful what you read and how you apply stuff
It could happen to you! – Are you ready?
As they say, fact is stranger than fiction. Here are the mind-blowing aspects of the Sanjay Gulati story.
- For the last 6 months, he was unemployed as Jet Airways went bankrupt
- His family had close to 1Cr deposits in PMC bank (one of the largest co-operative banks in the country)
- The bank goes kaput and he cannot withdraw the money
- His 80+ year old father participated in a protest with him
- He has a son with disabilities
- He was 51 years old and died of cardiac arrest
My first gut reactions to reading this story are:
“Hope he had enough insurance; Hope the widow doesn’t get the claim rejected due to a fine print that says he was in a protest / anti-social activity”
“An 80-year-old guy goes to a protest march? He is alive and his son is dead? “
Fooled by randomness, Risk of exposures & Devastating Sequence of risks:
Let me digress. Take a breath. Think for a moment.
What is the probability a 50yr old engineer loses a job? In my father’s days it was impossible. Nowadays, it is highly probable but still, it should be small right?
What is the probability that your top co-operative bank where you had major savings goes kaput? Nowadays this is becoming more common but same as above?
What is the probability an 80-year-old father is fit and his 50-year-old son dies of heart attack?
What is the probability that a person has a special needs child? Typically, it is something like 1 in 1200 if the parents are under 30.
What is the probability that all the above 4 happening together to the same person? Really miniscule right?
What we forget is though the probabilities are miniscule, but non zero, the impacts are deadly – close to minus infinity! The product (Expected value) becomes a huge negative number.
Think of the chain of events that led to his stress-induced death. Special needs child->job loss at 50->losing access to 1Cr cash in your bank->huge mental stress->heart attack
“Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette – and calling it by some alternative “low risk” game.” – Taleb
I urge the readers to check out this presentation on Non-Ergodicity and its implications and do play the coin toss game at the end!
Let’s come back.
What are the issues that we straightaway see here with respect to personal finance?
- Importance of adequate term insurance coverage + spouse knowing where it is actually located!
- Emergency fund to cover job loss in current scenarios
- Importance of side gigs and secondary source of income
- Having a separate corpus for special needs children’s care – bumping up an emergency fund and insurance adequately
- Longevity issues – Father outliving his children and probably his money!
- The notion of false security with “government” or financial institutions. The undeniable fact that banks are NOT secure! Risk of piling deposits with a single bank. How many of us know that our FDs are backed only up to the limit of 1 lakh in case of a bank default?
- Risk of having the money but not able to touch it when you need it the most
- Last but not least, taking care of your mental and physical health
*************************************************
I leave with you with the following questions. Put yourselves in their shoes.
- What should/can the widow do now? For herself, for the child?
- What should/can the father do now?
- Is there anything SG could have done differently to have a different outcome?
I will be interested to know responses from readers as well as advisors from the blog.
Please join me in thanking Srivatsan in yet another insightful piece. In my opinion, chasing returns in equity is a known devil unlike chasing returns in fixed income. More on this in today’s video on YouTube. Subscribe to be notified
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