Guidance Note
for Approval and Operation of Agent Banking Activities of Banks
1. Introduction:
Guidelines on Agent Banking for the Banks were issued vide PSD Circular No. 05 dated December 09, 2013. The guidelines were issued for promoting agent banking as a complimentary channel for financial inclusion and supervising agent banking of banks. According to Section 7(1) and 7(2) of Guidelines on Agent Banking, scheduled banks in Bangladesh are required to obtain prior approval from Bangladesh Bank for undertaking agent banking business.
2. Scope:
This guidance note will provide a clear framework which will cover the following aspects of agent banking business:
2.1. Approval requirements of launching agent banking activities of scheduled banks
2.2. Agent selection criteria
2.3. Approval procedure and criteria
3. Service Area
Target groups those really need to be served financial services under agent banking are the nonprivileged, underserved population and the poor segment of the society, especially from geographically dispersed location. Banks will give much emphasis on the rural area to cover lion share of the target group but at the same time will not ignore the rest of the target group by concentrating on the urban area in a limited scope. Thus, the service area for outlet opening of agent banking has to be designed by following criteria:
3.1. The ratio of the number of sub-agents/outlets of a bank will be 2:1 for rural and urban area. That means, a bank must have at least 2 rural agent banking outlet to have 1 urban agent banking outlet.
3.2. Banks will provide priority to rural area for their operation of agent banking.
4. Approval requirements:
Any scheduled bank in Bangladesh to commence agent banking must fulfill the following
requirements:
4.1. The bank must have their own Policy for agent banking operation approved by its Board of Directors (BoD). The policy must cover agent selection criteria, management procedure, operational structure and service standard of agent banking, monitoring system of agents, customer protection strategies, legal and regulatory compliance, marketing and branding strategy, selected products, schedule of charges, business continuity plan and business contingency plan those must be contained in the separate chapter and articulated in the policy in detailed manner.
4.2. The bank must have a separate department which will be run by a dedicated team. The department will be headed by at least Senior Executive Vice President/General Manager or equivalent for operating agent banking. This department must have a separate dispute resolution cell/wing for complying with the instructions of the section 16.0 of Guidelines on Agent Banking for the Banks.
4.3. The bank must have its own internal audit and monitoring manual for its agent banking operation approved by its BoD.
4.4. The bank must have its own AML/CFT policies and procedures for agent banking as well
as Agent/sub agent due diligence policy and procedure approved by its BoD.
4.5. The bank must conduct a feasibility study along with risk assessment prior to apply for
agent banking approval.
4.6. The bank shall be held responsible for any unlawful/fraudulent activities performed by
Agent or Sub-agent.
4.7. The bank will take the necessary measures for the protection and security of the money transacted at client level and the protection of customers. Apart from that, banks will take insurance coverage for the money kept in the locker/vault of sub-agent/outlet.
4.8. Only shariah based banks can pursue shariah based banking in agent banking activities.
4.9. Bangladesh Bank will accord its approval to banks considering different aspects (capital
adequacy, liquidity situation, asset quality, profitability, internal control system and others) of
the overall performance of banks.
5. System Requirement
With a view to establishing sound systems and vigorous infrastructure to support agent banking, banks have to ensure the compliance with the following minimum requirements:
5.1. IT infrastructure must be
a) able to support real-time processing;
b) able to provide a secured network including end-to-end encryption; and
c) robust in managing structural capacity to support agent banking services.
5.2. Payment Acceptance Devices (PAD) must -
a) be able to support minimum Two Factor Authentication(TFA)/Two-step verification for agent and customer registration;
b) be able to support the requirement of end-to-end encryption based on industry standards algorithm (from end-point devices i.e. PAD to host system); and
c) not store any sensitive customer information like PIN/Password at the end-point devices like PAD.
5.3. Agent Banking Application/Software musta) be able to support host validation for PIN/Password authentication;
b) be able to provide device authentication during session activation and transaction processing at host level;
c) be capable to have limit management feature for agents, customer, transaction and other limit requirements;
d) include transaction and system audit trail
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