Two private commercial banks (Dutch-Bangla Bank and BRAC Bank) Wednesday signed an agreement with Election Commission to have effective NID verification services in the country.

Addressing the signing ceremony on the day, Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman said Election Commission may consider providing the NID verification services access via Bangladesh Bank that will reduce to only one/two network connectivity for all banks and financial institutions.

"It will also help Election Commission to manage ICT security effectively. Election Commission may review existing rules and regulations to consider this," the BB Governor said.

He said to provide this NID verification service to all banks and financial institutions, Election Commission will have to manage multiple network connectivity from multiple service providers and to maintain uninterrupted 24x7 service.

With the signing of this agreement, banks will be able to verify NID submitted by the account holders for account opening, loans, etc. This verification will authenticate individuals and ensure transparent financial transactions. Frauds and forgery will be drastically reduced. Quality of financial services will be increased. Financial Intelligence Unit and Credit Information Bureau will be able to provide better services to the economy.

"I hope banks will verify NIDs of their existing and upcoming customers (account holders and bearers) regularly and that will reduce time taken for KYC. And ultimately this will ensure transparency in transactions in every aspects. I also hope during mobile bank account opening and mobile transactions they will expand this service with mobile application or mobile USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) services," Dr Atiur said.

He said internal and external security and services availability are now an important challenge for ICT professionals. Banks and financial institutions are working hard to mitigate threats and risks in this area.

"We declared our vision "Digital Bangladesh Bank" and we have already shown our commitment by digitizing and modernizing our payment system. We have taken necessary initiatives to introduce RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) System which will be completed by this year," the BB Governor said.

"We do believe that Bangladesh will be a role model for mobile financial services globally if the positive trend continues. Agent Banking model also started operation recently to enable and broaden our financial inclusion initiatives. Bangladesh Bank is working with state owned commercial banks to implement core banking solution and hope that all the state owned commercial bank branches will have to use core banking solution by 2016," Dr Atiur mentioned.

Introducing these IT-driven services, Bangladesh Bank has increased the productivity of employees, changed supervision from reactive to proactive, introduced near real time internal control and compliance, encouraged green banking adaptation etc.