Khondker Fazle Rashid has joined Premier Bank Limited as Adviser.

Prior to joining Premier Bank, he was Managing Director of Dhaka Bank Ltd, said a press release.

Fazle Rashid, an MBA from IBA, Dhaka University started banking career with Sonali Bank as probationary officer in 1978.

He joined Arab Bangladesh Bank Limited and worked there during 1982-1999. He was Senior Vice President and Manager of the bank’s Mumbai branch.

Rashid also worked as Senior Executive Vice President and Head of Credit Division of Southeast Bank Limited during 2000-2003.

During his long 34 years of experience, he took part in a number of professional trainings, workshops, seminars and symposiums at home and abroad.

He is a life member of IBA Alumni Association, University of Dhaka and he was the Secretary General of Association of Bankers Bangladesh Limited .

Dhaka- Signing Ceremony between Trust Bank Limited and Meghna Life Insurance Company Limited for Insurance Premium Payment through Trust Bank Mobile Money held, informed by the authority.
Ishtiaque Ahmed Chowdhury, Managing Director and CEO of Trust Bank Limited & Mohammed Shah Alam FCA, Managing Director of Meghna Life Insurance Company Limited has signed an agreement for Insurance Premium Payment Collection through Trust Bank Mobile Money on 2nd June 2014 at Dhaka.
On this occasion, S. M. Akram Sayeed, Executive Vice President & Head of IT,ADC & Mobile Banking Divisions and other High Officials of Trust Bank and Shamsuddin Ahmed, Director, Marketing and Development, Mohammad Tarek FCA, Senior Executive Director and other High Officials of Meghna Life Insurance Company were present at this signing ceremony.
Through this service all the insurance premium holder of Meghna Life Insurance Company will be able to pay insurance premium from anywhere anytime through Trust Bank Mobile Money. Trust Bank Mobile Money service is available from all 88 TBL Branches and more than 13,000 Paypoints across the country.

Banks’ average spread stands at 5.14pc

Despite repeated reminders by the central bank, most of the banks seem reluctant to reduce their spread between the interest rates on lending and deposit mostly due to higher operational costs. Surprisingly instead of lowering the rate, the average spread of the banks has started experiencing an upward trend in recent days. Bangladesh Bank has long been instructing the commercial banks to keep the spread below five percent with a view to reducing the high lending rate. The central bank issued a circular as on January 27, 2012 asking the banks to reduce their spread rate within 5 per cent by March, 2013.
According to Bangladesh Bank (BB), the average spread stood at 5.14 per cent at the end of April, 2014 while it was 5.15 per cent in March, 5.06 per cent in February and 5 per cent in January last. The average spreads of nationalized and specialized banks, however, remained within the central bank’s prescribed rate. But the situation is a little bit different in cases of the Private Commercial Banks (PCBs) and Foreign Commercial Banks (FCBs) which were over 5 per cent.
Among the 39 PCBs, some 17 banks have failed to keep their spread rate below the central bank’s prescribed rate of 5 per cent in April. The banks included the AB Bank, The City Bank,  Pubali, Uttara, Eastern, Prime, Dhaka, Social Islami, Dutch-Bangla, Southeast, Prime, ONE, Bangladesh Commerce, Premier, Bank Asia, Jamuna and BRAC Bank Limited.
Of the 9 FCBs, some7 banks have also failed to keep their spread within 5 per cent. The FCBs included Standard Chartered, Habib Bank, Citi Bank NA, Commercial Bank of Ceylon, Woori, HSBC and Bank Al-Falah.
“The spread is increasing gradually because of poor monitoring system and increase of operational costs,” said Bangladesh Bank former governor Salehuddin Ahmed. “Mere instruction is not sufficient rather it needs strict surveillance and strong monitoring which ultimately help contain the spread”, the former governor added.
According to the central bank, schedule banks on an average provided 8.11 per cent interest against deposits and received 13.25 per cent interest against lending. During the period (in April last) the average spread of four state owned commercial banks was about 3.58 per cent. Their average deposit rate was 7.54 per cent while the lending rate was 11.12 per cent. 
The specialized banks average spread was 3.53 per cent. Their deposit rate was 9.55 per cent and the lending rate was 13.08 per cent. On the other hand, PCBs average spread rate was 5.35 per cent. The average deposit rate of PCBs was 5.35 per cent. 
The PCBs group offered 8.52 per cent against deposit and received 13.87 against lending.
An unexpected spread rate was noticed in the case of FCBs, which shot up to 8.47 per cent at the end of April last. 
The FCB groups offered 4.54 per cent interests on deposits while lending rate was 13.01 per cent. 
BB executive director M Mahfuzur Rahman said the central bank holds frequent meetings with chief of all banks after every three months interval and discussed the overall performance and give necessary instruction to keep the spread within 5 per cent.
Earlier the central bank governor, Dr Atiur Rahman warned the banks to keep their spread within the desired level. “Banks will not get permission for opening new branches if they exceed the targeted spread”, said the governor. 
In spite of the warnings and instructions, banks failed to carry out the instructions in reducing the spread, said economist MM Akash terming it ominous for the economic development. 
The central needs to impose exemplary punishment against the banks violating its instructions, said the economist.
Expressing his resentment, FBCCI vice-president Md Helal Uddin, said the country’s banking sector fails to provide low interest credit facilities due to its higher spread. 
He urged the central bank to take proper measures against the banks who failed to reduce their spreads. Banks definitely have to reduce the spread for providing low interest loan for the betterment of the business community as well as economy, he added.

Bangladesh Bank on Monday said that scheduled banks would be able to operate their agent banking in municipal areas besides in the rural areas.
To this end, the BB issued a circular to managing directors and chief executive officers of all banks saying that they (banks) could not operate their agent banking in the metropolitan and city corporation areas.
The BB had earlier said that the banks had to operate their agent banking in the rural areas.
Under the agent banking, a bank appoints any individual or NGO or microfinance institution as its agent for providing limited-scale banking services, especially to the poor people.
Non-governmental organisations or microfinance institutions regulated by the Microcredit Regulatory Authority of Bangladesh will be able to play as an agent of a bank.
On behalf of the banks, the agents can transact cash, distribute remittance, gather information for bank accounts, accept loan applications, transact and recover loans and receive applications for credit and debit cards.
Bank agents can also receive utility bills and passport fees and distribute government assistance under social safety net programmes.
Bangladesh Bank gave permission to two banks on May 29 to provide agent-banking services. The banks are Bank Asia and NRB Bank.

The government will start its efforts to bring banks' stockmarket exposure down to the permissible limit two years before the schedule of 2016, in keeping with the pledges made to the International Monetary Fund.
The amended Banking Companies Act (BCA), which was passed in July 2013, stipulates that banks cannot invest more than 25 percent of their total capital in stocks.
However, the central bank gave them until July 2016 to bring down their exposure, as the government did not want to impose the new limit right away lest the market became volatile. Now, the government has instructed Bangladesh Bank to initiate the process.
The move comes after the government made a host of promises to the IMF board in May, based on which the multilateral lender last week made available about $141 million for Bangladesh under its three-year Extended Credit Facility of about $987 million.
“For banks currently with stockmarket exposure above the permissible limit, BB will strictly monitor that the current exposures in nominal taka terms will not be increased and strictly enforce a steady reduction in their investments within the three-year period allowed in the BCA,” said the paper by the finance ministry to the IMF.
As of December 2013, the stockmarket exposure of banks and their subsidiaries were abnormally high: on average, it was 50 percent of their capital, and for many, it was as high as 150 percent.
The paper also spelt out a number of measures the government will focus on to strengthen governance, credit risk management and balance sheets of state-owned commercial banks, which have become an Achilles heel for taxpayers.
In one of the measures, the central bank will assess, by December 2014, the conformity of the banks with their recently approved internal control and compliance policies.
The government will also be tough on the implementation of the central bank's memorandum of understandings with the state banks to improve the latter's performance.
“We will impose strong sanctions provided for in the MoUs in case of non-compliance, particularly regarding areas which are directly under the control of banks, such as credit growth ceilings and limits on single borrower exposures and related lending.”
The paper said if any bank breaches the credit growth ceiling, BB will order the lender to deposit the entire excess amount lent over the credit limit.
The relaxed loan rescheduling guidelines, introduced in December 2013 to help borrowers ride out the impacts of last year's political unrest, will not be extended beyond June 2014, it said. To ensure proper utilisation of the temporary policy and prevent the possibility of misuse, BB will order banks to issue quarterly status reports on the restructured loans and monitor the reports.
BB will also verify the rescheduled loan accounts and inspect them on a case-by-case basis to ensure compliance with the central bank's approval conditions.   
If any restructured loan is defaulted on, BB will instruct that it be classified adversely and the required provision be made. Banks have rescheduled loans about Tk 14,000 crore as of March this year under the facility.