SLBA Committee for the prevention of frauds in banks

This Committee consists of Heads of Internal Audit of Banks and is a forum to share information on any frauds or attempted frauds in banks, to discuss means to mitigate and possible prevention of such frauds etc. The incidence of Computer fraud and products available for fraud detection is one of the areas discussed by this Committee for recommendation to member Banks.

SLBA Committee on Basel 2.

A Committee consisting of experts in Capital Adequacy measures were appointed to this committee to study in detail the requirements for compliance with Basel 2 regulations (provide link to article on the subject under ‘Legal & Regulatory Matters’) and make recommendation to Banks after consultation with Central Bank of Sri Lanka.

AML Compliance Officers group

Under Financial Transactions Reporting Act, No.6 of 2006 any person or body of persons engaged in or carrying out any finance business or designated non-finance business within the meaning of this Act, is required to appoint a Compliance Officer (CO) who will be responsible for ensuring the Institutions compliance with the requirements of this Act.

Accordingly all Banks have appointed Compliance Officers to carry out the functions in conformity with the Act. In order for these officers to benefit from synergies of the CO’s, at the initiation of the SLBA all the CO’s were combined into an informal group to facilitates exchange of views, discuss and agree on issues relating to compliance with the Act, represent matters to the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Central Bank which regulates AML compliance in the country.

This group together with the support of IT and Legal expertise from within Banks were instrumental in formulating the broad outline for the proposed computerization in Banks to effectively conform to the Know Your Customer and Customer Due Diligence standards as conveyed by the FIU and also to comply with the Act.They also drafted the RFP to call for proposals from vendors for a common software solution to a group of Banks.