A genuine customer who worries about the unnecessary harassment by recovery agents when he enters into a contract does not need to be bothered any longer.

Under the orders of the central bank-Reserve Bank of India- recovery agents of the banks are undergoing training on behaviour and banking. This step has been taken by the RBI after a series of complaints about misbehaviour of recovery agents with loan defaulters.

Rupeetimes.com also had earlier compiled Chronicles of Excesses by Recovery Agents.

The training process mandates the recovery agents to be in formal attire. These people are expected to appear for a certificate exam conducted by Indian Institute of Banking and Finance (IIFB) at the end of the training period. This training programme is mandatory for all the recovery agents.

The training contents include 100 hours of training, a certificate examination conducted by IIFB and further due diligence by the respective banks. The training involves both domain knowledge and behavioural skills. There are more than 70 institutes recognized across the country to run such a training programme.

The CEO of IIFB, R Bhaskaran said, "This is not training like criminal reforms. All recovery agents are not bad. He has a job to do. The training is in behavioural skills and it imparts knowledge so that the recovery agent carries out this job in a feasible manner."

Anup Mittal from Arcil said, "This is our second batch. We had 15 people in the first batch for our own consumption. The results have been good with 93% plus pass results. This batch has about 25-30 people. The participants are happy. They themselves thought that there was a need for such a course."

Despite the Reserve Bank of India issuing strict guidelines to bank recovery agents, incidents of agents threatening customers continue to surface and therefore the apex body had to mandate such a training programme. The response of the training programme is slowly rising with time.

Industry experts feel that a similar training programme should be organized for the selling agents so that the right product could be sold to the right person.