The insurance regulator is set to introduce offsite supervision to develop a sound and vibrant insurance industry in the country.

The offsite supervision -- CARAMEL -- like the central bank's CAMELS rating, will be based on analyses upon seven indicators - capital adequacy, asset quality, reinsurance, actuarial issues, management efficiency, earnings and profitability and liquidity -- to be evaluated on a scale of one to six.

This is the latest move in a series of reforms, initiated by the Insurance Development and Regulatory Authority (IDRA), as it seeks to stamp out graft and ensure efficiency in one of the key financial sectors.

The regulator wants to publish the rating for both life and non-life insurance companies by the end of this year, based on their performance in 2011.

IDRA chairman M Shefaque Ahmed said: "This will help improve the image of our insurance industry."

Mr Ahmed said it will protect the interests of policy-holders, their beneficiaries and potential policy-holders.

The IDRA chief said during preparation of CARAMEL, two types of supervisions -- off-site and on-site - will be conducted for ensuring consistency of the supervisory functions in line with the best international practices and principles.

An off-site supervision focuses on various returns and reports, including statutory reports, to see whether the facts and figures reported therein are correct and mutually consistent with each other.

If any information appears suspicious, it is referred to the on-site inspection team to examine books and accounts of the insurer concerned at its place of business.

The IDRA sources said the off-site supervision team will also identify the problem areas and refer those to the on-site supervision team for specific investigation.

News: The Daily Financial Express/Bangladesh/19-Nov-12

The joint portfolio review meeting of the government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on the ADB assisted projects in Bangladesh ended here Sunday with a focus on improving the implementation process. The joint portfolio review meeting between the government of Bangladesh and the ADB took place during November 7-18 in the capital to further improve development outcomes, said an ADB release.

The review meeting concluded through a wrap-up meeting chaired jointly by Iqbal Mahmood, Senior Secretary of the Economic Relations Division and ADB Country Director M Teresa Kho.

Senior government officials, project directors, and ADB officials from its headquarters and the Bangladesh Resident Mission joined the meeting.

The discussions in the joint portfolio review meeting highlighted reducing start-up delays, early preparation and approval of Development Project Proposal (DPP), and strict adherence to project readiness filters in processing the ADB- assisted projects.

Teresa Kho in a statement said, “This review meeting is aimed at delivering faster development results and benefits to the people of Bangladesh by identifying project implementation bottlenecks and constraints to achieve development objectives.”

She said that the review meet agreed on time-bound actions with monitoring targets to improve the performance of the portfolio. ADB’s assistance to Bangladesh currently amounts at around one billion US dollars a year.

As one of the lead development partners in energy, water supply and sanitation, education, and transport sectors, ADB’s cumulative lending to Bangladesh amounts to $13.26 billion for 220 loans, while the technical assistance (TA) grants for 413 TA projects stood at $220.66 million until November 2012.

News: The Daily Independent/Bangladesh/19-Nov-12

Mohammad Abdul Mannan, Managing Director of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited, receives Remittance Ambassador of Bangladesh award at a function in Dhaka Saturday.

Mohammad Abdul Mannan, Managing Director of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited has received Remittance Ambassador of Bangladesh award.

Dr. AB Mirza Azizul Islam, former adviser of the caretaker government handed over the ‘Remittance Ambassador Award’ to Mohammad Abdul Mannan at a hotel in Dhaka Saturday.

‘The Industry’, a financial weekly magazine announced the award considering the outstanding contribution of Md. Abdul Mannan to attract remittance from the expatriates through banking channel.

Besides, the Bank was awarded “Best Rated Bank Award-2012” for CAMELS rating.

Enayet Karim, Editor of The Industry presided over the function.

Ataul Haq, former deputy governor, Bangladesh Bank, Md. Nurul Amin, President, ABB, Shah Md. Nurul Alam, President, Global Economic Forum Bangladesh Chapter, CEOs and top executives of different banks attended the function.

This is to mention that IBBL is the best performer among the public and private sector commercial banks and foreign banks operating in the country in receiving remittance from the expatriates residing in different countries especially from the Middle East states.

Till October 2012, the Bank has collected a total of $ 3257.13 million remittance while the total national volume of remittance in the said period is $11755.18 million.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/19-Nov-12

Bangladesh Bank (BB) Sunday directed all the scheduled banks operating in the country to facilitate bank accounts at Tk 10 each for the extreme poor women who are being supported by the government under Food and Livelihood Security (FLS) scheme.

The only requirement for opening such bank account is possessing the national identity card, reads a circular issued by the central bank last evening.

The central bank said the FLS beneficiaries could enjoy bank accounts without any service charge or any kind of fees once it is opened at any branch of any bank operating in the country.

Banks were asked by the central bank to implement this directive as soon as possible.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/19-Nov-12

Dr Atiur Rahman, Governor of Bangladesh Bank is seen at the inaugural session of the 12th SAARC Payment Council (SPC) meeting at a hotel in Dhaka Sunday.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman Sunday said an efficient and secure payment system is a vital component of financial market infrastructure to meet the growing internal and external clearing and payment-settlement needs of the businesses related to government, household and financial sectors.

The BB governor made the remarks while addressing the inaugural session of the 12th SAARC Payment Council (SPC) meeting in the city.

He said the SAARC Payments Council promotes collaboration and mutual assistance in reforms and development of the national payments systems in line with the international standard to expedite trade and investment flows in the region.

Bangladesh Bank hosted the day-long event at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel aiming at making bilateral payments among the SAARC member countries faster and easier and finding ways to address the challenges emerging in the process of global technological adoption in the financial systems.

Atiur further said Bangladesh has attained substantial progress through introducing the fully automated Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH) for inter-bank clearing and settlement of paper based and electronic fund transfers, with rules and procedures conforming to CPSS core principles.

Clearing and settlement processes of paperless electronic fund transfers have the additional important feature of being greener or more ecologically suitable than the traditional paper based processes, he added.

He said, “our next medium term goal will be to put in place an Real time gross settlement systems (RTGS) for real time settlements over the medium term as high value transactions increase in number and volume”.

He also observed that SAARC member economies of diverse size and structure are understandably at different stages of payments system development.

The governor observed that deliberations in this SPC forum are proving useful in learning from each other’s experiences that may help speed up the eventual cross border interlinking of electronic fund transfer channels of all member countries.

Central bank officials from seven other SAARC countries — Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka participated in the day-long program.

Representatives from each country presented a separate country presentation in the meeting, highlighting the progress and updated payment system of their country.

According to a BB statement, governors of the SAARC Finance Group approved the proposal of setting up of the SAARC Payments Initiative (SPI) in October 2007. According to this decision of the SAARC Payments Council (SPC), the apex body responsible for policy making SAARC Payment Initiative (SPI) was established.

The SPI is a regional payment group formed by central banks or monetary authorities of the SAARC Finance Group to help each other reform national payment and settlement systems (PSS) individually and collectively.

The initiative of establishing the SPI was originated at the SAARC Finance Conference on “Towards a Regional Payment Group” held in Colombo in July 2007.

Bangladesh Bank is hosting the SAARC payment council meeting for a second time. Earlier, it hosted the 7th Meeting of SAARC Payments Council on March 28 in 2010.

News: The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/19-Nov-12