The central bank is set to strictly monitor whether the banks are giving rewards to their good borrowers as many of the institutions are reluctant to do so.

In January next year, the banks will have to forward the specifics of the rebates given during 2015 and 2016, said Anwarul Islam, a spokesperson for Bangladesh Bank.

From then on, the banks will have to routinely send details of the rebates extended to their good borrowers, he added.

The central bank introduced the rebate policy in March last year with the view to incentivising the good customers such that they are encouraged to always repay their loans on time.

The good borrowers will be given a 10 percent rebate on their interest payments, as per the policy.

Many of the banks tried to skip the incentive programme, putting up various excuses.

The move to incentivise good borrowers came nearly two months after the central bank approved a restructuring policy for large borrowers, giving them a maximum of 12 years to repay loans above Tk 500 crore.

Just seven months ago, Sweden's Handelsbanken was worth almost $20 billion less than Deutsche Bank. This month, it eclipsed Germany's flagship lender.

Its market value has held up as concerns over negative interest rates and bad debts, along with spiralling macro-economic worries, have seen other European lenders slide this year.

Handelsbanken epitomises a more conservative Nordic banking style that prioritises cost control over revenue growth. It pays no annual bonuses to executives and has a decentralised model that gives branch managers control over lending, which it says helps reduce bad loan risks.

It had an efficiency ratio - a measure of a bank's operating costs as a percentage of its revenue - of 45.3 percent in 2015. By comparison, Deutsche Bank had 115.3 percent and BNP Paribas 82.9 percent.

Former Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg has lauded its approach, calling for more "boring" banking based on borrowing and lending over the risk-taking and expansionist policies in the global industry that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis.

"I wouldn't use the word boring, but we don't want any surprises," Handelsbanken finance chief Ulf Riese told Reuters. "The one risk we do like to take is credit risk because we know our customers so well and have such a local presence."

Nordic banks' relatively conservative approach to risk and cost control has sheltered them somewhat from the turbulence across the continent; while the European banking index had dropped more than 20 percent this year, as of 0800 GMT on Friday, the six major Nordic banks were down on average about 8 percent.

Handelsbanken has fallen just 1 percent this year, giving it a market value of about $24.5 billion on Friday, topping Deutsche Bank's $23.8 billion. At the beginning of August it was worth around $28.5 billion against Deutsche's $48 billion.

The six Nordic lenders - also including Sweden's Nordea , Swedbank and SEB, Norway's DNB and Denmark's Danske Bank - made a combined net profit of 13.2 billion euros ($14.6 billion). Handelsbanken reported the biggest profit in its 144-year history.

They have all slashed costs as they sought to recover from the crisis and navigate negative interest rates; Sweden and Denmark were among the first countries to introduce such rates.

Danske for example has reduced the number of branches to about 300 in 2015 from almost 800 in 2008 while Swedbank plans to cut costs by a tenth this year compared with 2014. Many have moved parts of their operations from city centres to the cheaper suburbs and invested heavily in digitalisation, allowing them to cut staff. Nordea held one in seven customer meetings online in the fourth quarter.

"We have argued for a long time that Nordic banks, Swedbank and Nordea in particular, have been the canaries in the coal mine," said Adam Barrass, banking analyst at Berenberg bank. "They have shown the path that you should follow in a negative rate environment or as net interest margins get squeezed."

Mamun-Ur-Rashid has recently been promoted to additional managing director of Standard Bank, the private commercial bank said in a statement yesterday.

He started his 33-year-long career in the banking sector with National Bank, according to the statement. He later worked for NCC Bank, Prime Bank, United Commercial Bank and Premier Bank. He joined Standard Bank in 2013.

A Federal Reserve regional president called Tuesday for the dismantlement of big banks whose failure could pose serious risk to the global financial system.

Neel Kashkari, who took office as president of the Minneapolis Fed on January 1 and was a top Treasury official during the 2008 financial crisis, said in a speech that "bolder, transformational options" must be considered to reform the banking sector.

"We must acknowledge that the largest banks are still too big to fail," Kashkari said at the Brooking Institution in Washington, according to his prepared remarks.

And if they fail amid a stressed economic environment, the government "will be forced to bail out failing institutions -- as we were."

Kashkari was one of the architects of the government's massive bailout of banks and automakers in the 2008 financial meltdown.

The largest banks "continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to our economy," Kashkari said, and the Dodd-Frank Act reforming banking regulation was a step in the right direction but it "did not go far enough."

Kashkari likened the largest banks to the potential destructiveness of a nuclear reactor. "The cost to society of letting a reactor melt down is astronomical," he said.

ne option could be "breaking up large banks into smaller, less connected, less important entities," he said.

Another would be to turn them into "public utilities by forcing them to hold so much capital that they virtually can't fail," and placed under tough regulation akin to that of a nuclear power plant.

"When the Dodd-Frank Act was passed, the economic outlook was perhaps too uncertain to take truly bold action. But the economy is stronger now, and the time has come to move past parochial interests and solve this problem," he said.

Kashkari said that almost by definition, financial regulators will not see the next crisis coming. He recalled that when he first joined the Treasury in 2006 it was evaluating what might trigger the next crisis.

Economic Reporter  :Standard Chartered Bank along with its implementation partner Bangladesh Brand Forum officially commenced Standard Chartered Agrow Award 2016 with a view to recognizing best performances in agriculture.The award handover ceremony of  'Standard Chartered Agrow Award 2016' will take place on 27th of March, this year in the city. Such kind of initiative will encourage the farmers across the country, said Bitopi Das Chowdhury, Country Head of Corporate Affairs, Standard Chartered while addressing a press conference at a city hotel on Monday. "I am really delighted that we will be having this award for the 3rd year running. I hope through this humble attempt of ours we will be able to motivate thousands of farmers and entities linked with the sector around the country to come up with exemplary contribution in the agricultural sector and help build a sustainable agriculture sector for this country." Bitopi Das mentioned that it is a privilege for the bank to be able to inspire and support the sector through Agrow Award. The winners will be honoured with prize money of taka five lacs each to help them expand their contribution to agriculture. Honourable mentions in each category will be given taka fifty thousand each, she also added.Talking to the reporter, Bitopi Das said, SCB is disbursing agriculture and SME loan with the liaison of micro-finance institutions (MFIs) across the country. "Of course, we do not have enough branches in the rural areas, but we want to contribute something to the development of country's economy", said the corporate affairs head. SCB meet its annual agriculture and SME loan target in the last year, she also added.Speaking at the press conference, Managing Director of Bangladesh Brand Forum Shariful Islam said, this year, the award will be presented on seven different categories, namely Best Agricultural Organization in Research and Innovation, Best Agricultural Organization in Support and Execution, Best Agricultural Exporter, Farmer of the Year - Male, Farmer of the Year - Female, and Farmer of the Year - Subsistence Market Farmer Group; and the newly introduced category Best Use of Technology in Agriculture. He explained the philosophy behind the initiative of Agrow Award. He shared that Bangladesh agriculture sector is an exemplary model in sustainable food production to the rest of the world, and Agrow Award recognizes the farmers and institutions that are relentlessly working to meet this vital need of a growing population.