Kudos indeed to Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist, and his Grameen Bank who started making small loans to the poor without any collateral (because no one else would in 1976) for being awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

Yunus reportedly set out to help Bangladeshi poor by handing out microcredit loans, initially to males heading the family and when this didn't work that well, found greater success when the loans was granted to the wives. Yunus, incredibly, kept up his creative banking and apparently went down to the field to help millions of families in Bangladesh and succeeded in alleviating poverty significantly over a period of 30 years. His NPL (non-performing loans) ratio was apparently less then 2%.

Alas, this success story eludes our Malaysian bankers who basically specialise in three different types of loans. Specifically credit cards, housing and car loans, and not necessarily in that order. They, too, go down to the field which includes shopping malls, airports, etc, to lure innocent shoppers, especially teenagers and young adults, into signing up for credit cards. If these new credit card holders don't pay up and if the amount is less than RM30,000, they are quickly blacklisted as bad debtors in the databases of CTOS (Credit Tip Off Service Sdn Bhd), CCRIS (Central Credit Reference Information System) or FIS (Financial Information System Sdn Bhd).

Once you are on these lists, you can forget about getting any credit as our learned bankers use these companies as the holy grail of credit referencing in Malaysia. In fact, it would be easier for your dog to get a credit card. If the amount is more then RM30,000, the bank's mighty legal machine quickly bankrupts them, consigning these souls to the Official Assignee. Similarly, if you default on your car loan, on day 61 you are again blacklisted and your car will then 'kena tarik' (repossessed). If you don't pay for your house, again same thing - blacklisting, house auctioned off and depending on the remaining amount owed, you will be CTOS-ed or bankrupted.

So unlike Muhammad Yunus who uses his banking skills to pull his countrymen out of poverty, our bankers actually specialise in making Malaysians poorer. How did our bankers fall so far behind in the race to become Nobel Prize winners? Well, we used to have more than 30 banks, but after the 1997 crisis, some smart alec decided that it would be better if we consolidated our banks to a minimum 10 without taking into account the vagaries of our culture, the way the average Malaysian does business and very importantly, how our legal system works which is always against the borrower.

The subsequent bank mergers, some of them forced, only went to create monopolies, so much so the lay Malaysian found it actually easier to borrow from loan sharks who unfortunately decided that if you 'non performed', you would either lose your finger, wife or life. So either way, a Malaysian, no matter how hard he tries to survive and eke a living, will have to risk these factors.

In fact, if we don't watch it, this type of 'fault finding' and lending policies by these desk bankers is going to stifle entrepreneurship, curtail business turnarounds, reduce our economic growth and indirectly affect FDIs simply on the assumption that businesses cannot fail. But success by definition cannot exist without failure.

How do we make sure our bankers don't remain polished moneylenders but instead, at least, think like Muhammad Yunus? Simple, actually. Outlaw bankruptcy and close down CTOS, FIS and CCRIS. That way, they will pay attention to the borrower and that he actually succeeds as they have no other alternative to get back their money. Also outlaw winding-up/liquidation of companies unless they are voluntary. The idea is to make certain our bankers pay attention to business operations, and not just lend, forget and let the law (which sides them greatly) work for them.

Muhammad Yunus had shown how important bankers are to society if they think right. It is high time our government started to turn the screws on our bankers to perform, otherwise let's go back to 30 banks or more. As it stands, God forbid, if a nuclear bomb or tsunami hits Malaysia tomorrow, our current bankers would still be busy issuing to victims LoDs (Letter of Demands), placing them on CTOS and bankrupting them in the aftermath.