Bangladesh Bank has, for the first time, prepared an outsourcing policy for banks using third-party service at home and abroad to help them mitigate risks and meet regulatory requirements.

Banking institutions throughout the world are increasingly turning to outsourcing as a means to reduce costs and achieve strategic aims.

When these third-party service providers handle much of banks' activity -- regulated or unregulated, it may impact their ability to manage their risks and monitor compliance with regulatory requirements, the BB said in a notice yesterday.

Subsequently, banks can mitigate the risks by: drawing up comprehensive and clear outsourcing policies, analysing the service providers' financial and infrastructure resources, negotiating appropriate outsourcing contracts and establishing effective risk management programmes.

The new policy allows banks to outsource 20 types of activities to service providers within Bangladesh, and prior approval of the central bank will not be required for using the services.

The services include mailing, storing physical records or virtual data, verification of address and documents, call centre, marketing for credit cards, among others.

Banks however cannot outsource its core management functions, any of its risk management functions or core banking operations.

But in case of foreign banks, parts of its core management functions or risk management functions can be operated by any of its offices abroad subject to fulfilling conditions, said the notice.

Any outsourcing outside Bangladesh will require prior approval of the central bank.

When engaging service providers in a foreign country, banks should closely monitor government policies and political, social, economic and legal conditions in the countries.

Moreover, an activity should not be outsourced if it impairs BB's right to assess or its ability to supervise, the notice said.

The minimum wages declared by the government of Bangladesh must be taken into consideration while determining the rate of wages, salary and compensation, to be paid against services provided by the staff employed by the service provider.

Details of such rates must be clearly stated in the contract, and banks should see through that the terms are being honoured.

Regular audits, at least annually for all outsourcing activities, should be conducted.

Bangladesh Bank (BB) has directed all local and foreign banks operating in Bangladesh to develop comprehensive policy guidelines for outsourcing some of their services to ensure proper monitoring of the third-party services.
In a circular on Monday, BB said banks are increasingly using outsourcing for reducing costs and achieving strategic aims, but managing the risk factors associated with the third-party services requires effective policy guidelines, reports BSS.
“Banks can mitigate these risks by taking steps to formulate a comprehensive and clear outsourcing policies, analyze the financial and infrastructure resources of the service provider, negotiate appropriate outsourcing contracts, require contingency planning by the outsourcing firm, and establish effective risk management programs, the circular said.
BB directive also drew a detail of the principles of the guideline to be followed by the banks when using outsourcing at home or abroad, that would help banks better mitigate the concerns.
It said the policy should include, inter-alia, identification of and the extent to which the relevant activities are appropriate for outsourcing, criteria for selecting suitable service providers, delegation of approval authorities for outsourcing depending on risks and materiality, risk mitigation measures and governance structure clearly defining roles and responsibilities of Board of Directors and management to monitor and review the operations.
The Board or the chief of Bangladesh operations in case of foreign banks will have the overall responsibility for ensuring that all ongoing outsourcing decisions taken by the bank, and activities undertaken by the service providers, are in keeping with its outsourcing policy. In addition, the officers responsible to manage a specific outsourcing arrangement shall also be personally responsible where personal liability needs to be assigned to individual bank officials for legal, regulatory or others purposes.
According to the circular, outsourcing means when any activity of a bank-company or part thereof done by another party from inside or outside the bank premises, from within Bangladesh or abroad irrespective of the term used for the relationship.
An outsourcing service provider can be an office of the banking company situated outside Bangladesh, its holding or subsidiary company or any of its affiliates in Bangladesh or abroad, or an unrelated third party in Bangladesh or abroad. 

M Moniruzzaman Khandaker, Chairman of Midland Bank Limited, Nilufer Zafarullah, MP, Vice Chairman, Md Ahsan-uz Zaman, Managing Director and CEO, and other high officials are seen at the banks Annual Business Conference-2015 at a city hotel recently.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman has urged international banks to help Bangladesh raise longer-term external financing for corporate houses and develop the domestic bond market.

Rahman spoke at a meeting on business and investment opportunities, organised by Habib Bank AG Zurich's Bangladesh representative office, at Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka on Friday.

There are ample opportunities for international banks to help boost international trade, raise external financing, develop domestic bond market and engage with the government in fund raising abroad, he said.

It is possible to expand international banks' domestic presence from representative offices to branch offices so that they can also expand activities here, he said.

He also suggested some potential sectors for new foreign investment: textiles, ceramics, leather products, infrastructure, energy, toll bridges, shipbuilding industry, light engineering, tourism, health care and ports.

Bangladesh has stable sovereign credit ratings, BB- and Ba3 by S&P and Moody's respectively for the last four consecutive years, he said, while explaining Bangladesh's suitability for foreign investment.

The World Bank ranks Bangladesh ahead of India, China, and Vietnam in protecting investors' interest, he said.

Also, the middle class consumer group in Bangladesh is larger than the total population of Malaysia, Singapore and the combined population of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Rahman said.

Electricity generation was more than doubled between 2009 and 2014 (from 4,931MW to 10,341MW) and is projected to reach 19,701MW by 2017, he said.

“Foreign investors can also benefit immensely from demographic dividend of the large youthful workforce in the country.”