RBI wants involvement of senior bank officials for Basel II

Mumbai, Mar 13 (UNI) As the deadline for the implementation of the Basel II norms is nearing fast, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked all the banks in the country to involve their senior management officers to speed up the process.

Addressing a workshop on Basel II Compliance-Opportunities for Indo-British Partnerships here today, Chief-General-Manager in Charge of the RBI, Prashant Saran, said ''We at RBI feel that involvement of senior management was needed in all the banks for the speedy implementation of Basel II which is to be implemented by the banks by March, 2008.'' The reason as cited by him is the Basel II norm was large and complicated.

Talking about the technology aspect of the norm, he said that ''We are trying to tackle it by the way of implementation of Core Banking Solutions (CBS) work on which was going at a large-scale.'' For those banks that were going slow on the front of CBS, he asked to get serious towards it. However, he pointed out that as being the regulator, the Central Bank was also gearing itself up to equip with the various aspects of the new norm.

Responding to the two issues including corporate governance (CG) and anti-money laundering mechanism which had been raised by the British Deputy High Commissioner, Vicki Treadell, in her speech earlier on the day, Mr Saran said that ''RBI has already appointed Ashok Gawli committee to look into the issue of CG, we are also seriously working to find out mechanism how to check the money laundering activities.'' Another impoprtant thing as outlined by him on the occasion was ''Recruitment of more staff by the banks for the Basel II implementation. It has been observed that the banks are deputing 8-12 persons for the job, but I personally think that the strength should be more keeping in view the complexities involved in the issue,'' he added.

UNI