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CONTENTS PREFACE: YOUR INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE INTRODUCTION: “BANKABILITY” STILL PART ONE “Bankability” Basics—The Teller as a Person 1 What Is a Teller? 2 The Elements of Job Success 3 Personal Pointers 4 Getting Along with Your Co-Workers 5 Effective Communications—The Key to Motivating Others 6 How to Get Ahead 7 After Working Hours PART TWO Build Your “Bankability”—Teller Operations 8 The Mathematics of Banking 9 The Bookkeeping of Banking 10 Knowing and Handling Money 11 How to Settle 12 Develop Efficient Work Habits 13 Opening New Accounts 14 How to Be Audited Painlessly PART THREE “Bankability” Involves Security 15 Safeguarding Your Cash 16 Cashing Checks 17 This Is a Holdup! 18 Forged, Counterfeit, and Altered Checks 19 Counterfeit Currency 20 Defalcations 21 Cons and Frauds 22 Security and Customer Courtesy 23 Handling Emergencies PART FOUR “Bankability” Means Dealing With Customers Effectively 24 Know Your Services 25 Customers Are Important 26 Dealing with Difficult Situations 27 Financial Tips for Customers PART FIVE “BANKABILITY” PLUS!—THE TELLER AS A SELLER 28 Selling Is Part of Your Job 29 Cross-Selling 30 Your Sales Talk GLOSSARY INDEX Your Investment in the Future PREFACE: Many people think of “investments” strictly as the act of putting away cash in some form for future use. Smart investors, however, don’t just put money into some venture or form of savings and forget it. To the contrary, they watch their investments carefully and try to help them grow. In a very real sense, your career is an investment of your most important asset—your time. When you chose a career as a teller, you made a wise selection of an industry in which to invest that time because it provides many opportunities for education and advancement. What’s more, you can take pride in being a teller because your financial institution is important to your community and you are important to it. But the choice of your career field wasn’t all that was involved. As a teller, you have the opportunity to help your investment increase in value every day. Whenever a customer approaches your window, you have a fresh chance to grow in your job, a job that can be as interesting and rewarding as you would like it to be. Time, like money, can be hidden away and lost … or it can be nurtured into growth. The banking business provides the opportunity for growth. Regardless of how long or short a time you have been part of that business, this book is meant to help you along the way. It has been revised and expanded once again to reflect the many recent changes that have taken place as they relate to tellers. Joan German-Grapes “Bankability” Still INTRODUCTION: The first edition of this book introduced a new word to the language —“bank-ability.” It is not in any dictionary. It is a noun, derived from the adjective “bankable,” which means “receivable as good at a financial institution,” and from the noun “ability,” which means the quality of being able to do something. “Bankability” means being able to do something of high quality. This includes the part financial institutions have played in the past in our society and the part they play now and will play in the future. It also includes the role of each individual within his or her financial institution. HOW IT ALL BEGAN Banking is about money. Financial institutions safeguard it, invest it, lend it, transfer it, and otherwise handle it for the benefit of the people and businesses in a community. People need money—not just in the sense of being able to pay bills, but to make things more efficient. Everyone remembers reading about the old barter system under which a farmer, for example, traded chickens for a pair of shoes … but what happened if the cobbler didn’t like chicken? Either the farmer went barefoot or the cobbler ate chicken anyway. Money made things easier. The farmer sold his chickens and used the cash he received to pay for the shoes he needed. And the cobbler bought what he wanted. Coins The idea of money originated about 2,700 years ago in Lydia when someone came up with the idea of coins. A coin is a piece of metal, stamped by the authority of a government as a guarantee of its value, that is used as money. Originally, the metal used was one with a value of its own, such as gold, silver, nickel, bronze, or copper. A truly great idea! Instead of barter, a universal medium of exchange. But coins have disadvantages. For one thing, they are inconvenient to carry around. So approximately 350 years ago, paper money—or currency—was invented. The Origins of Paper Money Everyone knows that money is important. We use it as a medium of exchange for purchasing goods and services of every description. Few people, however, know that our modern currency got its start because the King of England was broke! People in many parts of the world once kept their gold and silver in the vault of a “goldsmith,” who charged them a fee for the safekeeping. London merchants, however, kept theirs in the Tower of London. About 1640, King Charles I found that his credit was exhausted, so in order to get funds he seized the gold in the Tower of London. This upset the merchants so much that they lent the king £40,000 to get their gold back. And when they got it back, they put it with the goldsmiths, not in the Tower! The goldsmiths were very honest, and the receipts they issued for the deposited funds began to circulate in place of the actual gold. In other words, people were spending the receipts while the gold itself stayed locked in the vaults. Until recently, most of our paper money was simply receipts for gold and silver stored in government vaults, such as the one at Fort Knox. But most of our paper money today is in the form of “Federal Reserve Notes,” which are issued by government authorization and backed by the assets of the Federal Reserve Banks. The value of the enormous amount of goods and services we produce each year, which is so much greater than the amount of gold and silver that would be needed in circulation to pay for them, has caused us to devise new kinds of “money.” Checks enable people to “write their own money.” Loans from financial institutions are usually credited to the borrower’s account and actual cash rarely changes hands. Credit cards, checks, and other devices ease the strain on our money supply. How Banking Began Banking actually began before the first coins were minted in Lydia. About 1,000 years before that time, an elaborate system of barter was established in ancient Egypt. And about 4,000 years ago, financial institutions, similar to modern ones, were in existence in Babylon under the supervision of priests in the religious temples. Approximately 1,500