Dealer banks\\\' branches under ISS supervision

The central bank has brought 1,100 branches of authorised and non-authorised dealer banks under its newly-introduced integrated supervision system (ISS) to fix a watch on their around 75 operational lending risks, including the worst one like forgery.
Officials said various data from the AD and non-AD branches were uploaded into the ISS during the last few months. Now the Bangladesh Bank has started verifying those data.
The data verification is helping the BB to do inspection on the branches to cover the lending risks.
"With this, we not only are able to oversee the foreign-currency transactions but also the local-currency transactions in the country," said Deputy Governor Nazneen Sultana.
She said the central bank is now able to identify specific risks based on the data and inspect the branches concerned.
The Bangladesh Bank has introduced the ISS to reduce the billions of taka losses that branches face due to scams. Hallmark, Bismilla and so stand out as the bywords for such forgery.
The objective of the system is to reduce the supervision gap of the central bank and improve its capacity of self-assessment by strengthening the Management Information System.
An official said earlier the central bank had to wait three to four years to assess the transaction data of AD and non-AD branches of various banks. In many cases, data of many small branches could not be covered due to taking long time to reach those to the head offices.
"Now we can assess the data of the branches every month and we are now trying maximum output through fireball," he added.
Around 8,700 branches, including 900 AD branches of 56 banks, are involved in transaction of significant amounts of foreign and local currencies.
The BB Information Technology Department started feeding primarily data into the ISS in August 2013 and online in March this year. After finishing banks, data from non-banking financial institutions will also be stuffed into the ISS next year.
The official said Bangladesh Bank wants to set up a sustainable and supervision-monitoring framework to reach its supervision responsibility to the level that machines will identify maximum risks through using colours.
He also said the ISS has also helped the managing directors of the banks keep updated and accountable about the transaction being made through respective branches.
Asked how the BB assesses 75 pieces of risk coverage, the official said the system has track of 65 per cent of the loan-monitoring coverage, 100 percent foreign currency and 65 percent cash involvement and management, 90 per cent of Letter of Credits (LC) monitoring through AD and non-AD branches.
As the maximum transactions are done through AD branches, the department assesses the coverage through the numbers and supervision criteria, he added.