UK
Banks could find themselves in hot water over a propensity to assign clients to salespeople based on cultural affinities between the two.
Last weekend’s Financial Times carried an article on two former Muslim brokers who are suing their ex-employer, the Swiss stockbroker Financière Tradition, for religious discrimination after it allegedly diverted Jewish clients away from them in favour of non-Muslim colleagues.
Lawyers say client allocation could become a hot issue in the City, where salespeople tend to be assigned clients similar to themselves in the hope that the bond between the two might generate more revenues.
But allocating clients on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race or religion is unlawful. While it may, for example, be lawful to allocate a French-speaking salesperson to a French client, it wouldn’t be lawful to allocate only native French people to French clients.
“It’s a long established rule that you can’t pander to the prejudices of clients,” says Gareth Brahams, an employment lawyer at law firm Lewis Silkin. “Otherwise you might get shop owners saying they can’t employ black assistants because people don’t respond well to them.”
Brahams says that you can only make a case for assigning a French-speaking person to a French client if you can demonstrate that the linguistic requirement is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’.
Having established the legitimate aim, e.g. building strong client relationships, it then becomes necessary to show a direct link between the aim and the requirement for French speakers. And that requirement needs to be proportionate. “If French-speaking people only achieve a 3% increase in sales over non-French speaking people the requirement would be considered disproportionate,” Brahams adds.
That is absolute crap, we all know how psychology plays a big part in business, and that we are more relaxed with people that we feel are more related to us.
We all know it goes on, just a part of life though, surely?
Discrimination of this type is good business and as a religious person myself, I beleive this practice will be supported by God. The banks should therefore be highly rewarded if this story actually turns out to true.
Just normal…which God supports discrimination??
What bull! All of us have, as clients, changed a sales person assigned to because we didnt gel with them. And now the company should not be allowed to make an effort to find a good fit for its clients? How a bout a lottery to match clients and staff, politically correct and useless to everyone.
It works, as people can relate better to the people of their own cultural background as it is perceived that people from same background understand each other better.Clients are more open and relaxed when they are meeting some one who is of the same background. So for me it is good and i don’t believe it is discriminatory.
It all depends on the aditional earnings you get! Personnaly I adapt my religion to the client…
I like that I adapt my religion to the client. Awsome I wish my sales force that the same way
This is rubbish. I deal with many private clients that are Jewish and have expressed that they like people who can relate to them – some of the jewish clients do not like some muslims and this would be naturally bad business. I’m Christian but actually like many Jewish aspects and learned more about their views to bond better. It’s all about how the client feels – this is all to “PC”!
That’s a lot of crap, I’m Muslim and having worked mainly in MEA and North Africa I can tell you that a client is just looking for good advise and if you lot are not enough open minded to see that no matter what you religion is you can still have great professional relations you definetly need to change jobs!! “jewish don’t like Muslim”"Muslim don’t like Jewish” first that’s not always true and second who cares as long as they manage to build wealth together!!! Most of the time the client does not care if you show him that you’re a better sales person. I do think that religion should not be a criteria to match client to sales but skills and expertise should be the main criteria. You’re doing business not sharing religious point, if you can’t work efficiently with someone with a different religion then you should not work in sales. The client may not feel comfortable so what you should make him feel comfortable!!!
i agree with the first comment on how important psychology is in this business – chemistry has nothing to do with race/religion etc per se but that’s the driver of a successful relationship, and it is ultimately the client’s prerogative to choose an advisor he/she trusts and can have a meaningful relationship with. or they’ll just go somewhere else!
Matching salespeople to clients is…business !!
Clients expect first class advice and service above anything else. My religion, colour or accent has never hindered my relationship building in a region which is notorious for it’s religious conservativeness. However I would add that a common language between the clinet and adviser is obviously critical.
I am a Muslim working for a jewish bank looking after clients of all religions, few care about my religious background, they care about my professional capabilities. With few exceptions from mostly orthodox people its not an issue. Frankly, if it gets business done; why not, it is happening anyway.
One needs to stamp out this kind of ‘affinity’ – as the article states this is exactly how prejudice is supported. How many refuse to see a muslim doctor if they are jewish or vice-versa or a christian versus hindu? One’s professional abilities (ie quality of advice whether private banking or medicine or law) should be the main aim – choosing ‘advisors’ based on common interests in music, movies and food is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. If you want high quality advice ignore religion and focus on the input, if you are looking for mates to hang out with and go on holiday with while your portfolio potentially suffers, by all means pick professionals based on ‘similar background’.