Virtually Meeting People from the Foreign GMS Branches

If I am being honest, I’m not too sure how to start this one.

Usually, I’ll start more normally, but for this note, I’ll start with a little anecdote about how I write these notes.

To give a bit of background, I’m a night owl, a pretty severe night owl. If I didn’t have any responsibilities whatsoever, I would most likely sleep at 6 in the morning and wake up around noon. (Which is exactly what I do during long-term holidays)

So it makes sense that I usually start writing these posts late at night. Some people might find this crazy, but I actually prefer staying up late to do my work. The quietness of the night and the impending deadlines all help motivate me to spew out content.

And to make matters even weirder, I take a rather ‘different’ approach to writing. Whether it's writing a speech, a blog post, or an essay, I type what I say. Even during test conditions where I have to be quiet, I just talk to myself in my head as I write.

This might be slightly confusing for most people, but just imagine me sitting at my desk late into the night, talking to myself while vibing to some music. 

(Just to put it out there, the company that I’m interning at did not force me to stay up late to write this. I did this out of my own accord. I prefer this.)

Getting back on track from my little anecdote, today’s interviews were with three individuals from the foreign branches of GMS: Sandela-san and Cut-san from GMS Indonesia, and Santos-san from GMS Finance in the Philippines.

This was my first time getting to talk in-depth with people from the foreign branches so I was pretty psyched.

Interview w Sandela-san and Cut-san

My first interview was with the people from GMS Indonesia, and I’ll start off by saying that the interview was surprising.

First of all, what surprised me the most was what GMS Indonesia does. My original understanding of GMS was that they provide an alternative to collateral using the MCCS device to give the opportunity of loans to individuals who normally wouldn’t be able to do so. So I thought that GMS Indonesia would be the same. However, I learned that they apparently have a different thing going on there, where the business is basically renting out cars for ride-sharing services and small/medium businesses to those who usually wouldn’t be able to do so. To put it simply, it's similar in the idea and vision, but slightly different in execution.

I was not aware of this so a lot of my questions went down the drain, but simultaneously that surprising difference gave me a lot of questions that I wanted to ask. The main questions were probably the hows of the business.

Since GMS Indonesia, given their business model, needs to purchase their own cars, my first impression was the high initial costs and the increased risks associated with renting out their own property. Since Sandela-san and Cut-san were part of the Sales Team at GMS Indonesia, I primarily focused on how the system works and the sales aspect.

Apparently, their job is to reach out/follow up with customers who’ve registered for the rental service via their website or social media, and to guide them through the entire process of getting a car for them. However, they mentioned that they have many challenges in this process due to there being many different types of customers and many different situations.

I was told that while it was really uncommon, thefts or damages due occasionally occur (apparently only 1 case so far) and that they have to properly check/survey the individual. This is apparently done via surveying the environment of their home, asking neighbors, and matching the documents that they send to GMS with the physical copies that they have with them.

It might not be my place to provide my feedback per se but I really felt that the process was pretty robust, and given how the business model is to provide rental cars to individuals without collateral or credit for conventional loans, pretty reliable.

Aside from the business aspect, one thing that stood out to me was that even in the foreign branch of GMS, it seemed that the employees all cared about the social/global issue that the company was trying to solve. This ties into something that Park-san mentioned earlier in the week but seeing the entirety of the company be motivated towards the particular vision, one way or another, seemed really nice in terms of business efficiency, as well as, just normally. It’s hard to explain but it's nice. (Not really an explanation is it?)

Interview with Santos-san

Moving on to my interview with Santos-san, the head of finance at GMS Finance, I started pretty quickly, by first asking about why GMS Finance exists.

It could have been phrased better but that was a key question in my mind. GMS’s business model is basically to provide that alternative for collateral and is not really on the lending side of the business. For the most part, I’ve been told that they partner with financial institutions.

Santos-san told me that this was due to regulatory reasons, as well as, to be a proof of concept per se (*I may be wrong here).

Apparently, in the Philippines, the company needs to be classified as a financing company in order to provide loans, and therefore it was better to create a separate branch company called GMS Finance, separate from GMS Philippines.

The other reason was that GMS Finance exists to be an example as to how the idea of using MCCS can be successful in acting as an alternative to collateral, to build that trust for the financial institutions in the Philippines.

This prompted a lot of more questions, such as the financial situation in GMS Finance, the specifics regarding risks and defaults, assessment standards, etc., and they were all really interesting to get to know, especially for a person like me who’s interested in those kinds of things, but unfortunately, I won’t be able to write about them due to obvious reasons.

Aside from just personal curiosities about GMS Finance, I also asked him about the financial world in general, and whether he had any advice for me, given my interest in finance.

He told me how he got into the financial world, starting with an auditor and then getting involved in operations, and the benefits of learning about finance and being in this industry. Given my word constraints, I don’t think I will be able to get into the specifics, but I would say that all the things he said really increased my interest in finance. Finance was originally a major interest of mine, but given my personality of having a lot of different interests, it was one major interest out of a couple. However, with my conversation with Santos-san, I would say that it's my main interest now. That was how convincing it was.

Conclusion

In conclusion?

I would say that these two interviews were different. One helped me gain a deeper understanding of GMS, and the other really helped me solidify what I want to do in the future.

As a side note, I feel that getting to know more about everyone at GMS also has made me feel slightly more connected to the company and the workplace that I’ve been interning at. I think all of the interactions that I’ve been having will make this entire internship experience unforgettable in many ways.
(Especially with how much it’s impacted my dilemma of what I want to do with my life.)