Senator Pedro Araya harshly criticized a possible unwillingness of the country’s banks to allow both customers and non-banks to carry out all the paperwork over the internet and not just those who benefit the same banking as loan payments or the like. At the time that the beneficiary is the person, “they are forced to carry out this procedure in person, with the risks that it entails for the spread of Covid-19”, he argued.
“Chilean banking is showing its most perverse side. When it comes to being paid the fees for some credit, options to do so immediately arise online, but when people need to collect their salary for vouchers, they are forced to attend branches in person. That is, as long as banking wins, all options are offered, but when the beneficiaries are the people, they give them the same that they can die from this virus. Here there are banks that even offer this type of paperwork in an agile way for their customers through special CASHiers but for those who do not have them, they must do the long lines. It’s inhumane,” the parliamentarian said.
Araya also pointed to the specific situation in Antofagasta where many of the banks are located precisely in the points of greatest traffic of people such as the historic center of the city. Places where these days the largest number of rows are concentrated waiting to carry out formalities that banking today does not allow to do virtually.
Announcements and transparency
The parliamentarian also questioned the announcements made by the same bank regarding possible consumer credit rejet-making facilities, stating that “this is like the uncle’s story. Banks created the illusion that they are delivering economic relief for families who took on debts to them but in practice are earning equally at the cost of interest and formulas that re-ratify that banking always wins.”
Finally, Araya used the banks to transparent how many credit transactions they have carried out and what the customer’s profile is, in the case of the economic bailout plans that the institutions have advertised.
