Central bank to take CIB reports online

Star (July 12, 2011)

Bangladesh Bank will start providing online information of its Credit Information Bureau (CIB) reports to banks and non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) from July 19.
The central bank governor, Atiur Rahman, will inaugurate the online service at its headquarters in the capital city, bringing an end to the manual, time consuming and cumbersome process of sharing the important credit information among banks and financial institutions.
All the 47 banks and 29 NBFIs in the country will be able to collect the online CIB reports on July 19 and onwards. The banks and financial institutions will also be able to collect the CIB reports from the central bank physically if they want, said an official of the central bank.
This is a part of the continuous process of digitising the central bank and the country's banking sector to ensure efficient, faster and transparent services to the people, said Rahman.
“The online service will make the CIB reports only a click away, which now takes five to seven days.”
The governor said the faster CIB reports will cut the cost of doing business when the banks, NBFIs and respective persons will get it without going through the persisting hassles and longer time-frame.
"The election commission and other government organisations and agencies can also get necessary information to determine whether any particular person is a loan defaulter or not," he said, observing that this information would help combat credit related corruption.
Besides, the governor said the central bank will ensure better use of its manpower after introducing the online CIB reports as only five to seven staff can handle the entire system whereas few hundred people are now doing the jobs.
He said the huge manpower, which is now busy in handling over 5,000 CIB reports every month, would be use their skill in other necessary services of the central bank.
"We expect that the online services will ensure accurate, complete and faster CIB reports, which would eventually make credit activities of banks and NBFIs more dynamic and hassle-free," said SK Sur Chowdhury, executive director of BB.
He said the online system would also offer the clients a corruption-free service when it would ensure transparency in the credit status reporting system.
According to Bangladesh Bank, the workload of the CIB increased in recent days as the number of individual borrowers, owners and guarantors were on rapid rise against the backdrop of the increasing activities in trade, business and investment.
As per the existing provisions, outstanding loans worth at least Tk 50,000 are included in the CIB reporting system. The CIB was set up on August 18, 1992 in the central bank aiming to improve credit risks and reduce the extent of default loan in the country's banking system.
BB earlier introduced a number of automated services, including automated clearing house, magnetic ink readable cheque and mobile phone banking to provide necessary banking services at the people's doorsteps and make the central bank a paperless organisation.