The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Wednesday that it has directed all banks not to discriminate amongst customers and avoid turning down their requests for credit cards, car loans or other consumer facilities. Responding to a point of public importance raised by Senator Muhammad Ali Khan Saif regarding problems faced by the lawyers and politicians in opening of bank accounts, the SBP senior official stated that central bank has directed banks to desist from debarring the customers merely on the basis of specific profession, class and/or group, like lawyers, politicians and security officials.

The meeting was informed that in order to promote healthy banking practices, the SBP desires that banks shall follow ethical banking practices in dealing with financial consumer and desist from debarring the customers on the basis of specific occupation, trade, region, sex, and ethnicity.

The parliamentarians have time and again voiced their concerns over the discriminatory practices being adopted by banks in providing consumer finance and general banking facilities to politically exposed persons (PEP).

The SBP stated that PEP is an internationally accredited term defined by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which includes individuals who are entrusted with prominent public functions either domestically or by a foreign country, or in an international organisation e.g. head of state, senior politicians, senior government, judicial or military officials, and senior executives of state-owned corporations/ departments/ autonomous bodies. This does not intend to cover middle ranking or junior individuals in the foregoing categories.

As earlier conveyed, the SBP has taken various regulatory measures including issuance of detailed grievances handling mechanism and nomination of focal persons at each bank level to address the grievances/concerns of PEPs including parliamentarians.

The concerns raised by the parliamentarians regarding non-provision of credit card, car financing and other general banking facilities, on one pretext or other have been conveyed to the CEOs of all banks vide SBP with the directives to adopt mechanism whereby each branch, before processing any request received from the parliamentarians, shall report his/her name and other details to the focal person already nominated by each bank at head office level.

The focal person shall be responsible for monitoring the progress/status of the request received from the parliamentarian and shall also maintain an MIS for this purpose.

The SBP held a meeting with all banks on April 25, 2018 wherein banks were again categorically advised to refrain from discrimination in providing banking services to any segment of society including PEPs.

Apart from above, a dedicated special unit is set up at SBP which may be contacted by the parliamentarians in case of any complaint against any bank.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019