Monday, March 16, 2020

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Coronavirus: RBI says banking services should not be disrupted

Updated: 16 Mar 2020, 04:12 PM ISTStaff Writer

RBI today asked banks to put in business continuity measures to prevent any disruption of services, due to absenteeism either driven by the individual cases of infections or preventive measures

The Reserve Bank of India today asked banks to take measures and put in place business continuity plans to prevent any disruption of services due to coronavirus outbreak. "Several confirmed cases have also been detected in India, which highlight the need of a co-ordinated strategy for handling the emerging situations for protecting the resilience of the Indian financial system," RBI said in a statement.

The RBI asked banks to take these measures as part of their existing operational and business continuity plans, according to the central bank's statement released today:

1) Banks have been asked to devise strategy and monitoring mechanism concerning the spread of the disease within the organisation, making timely interventions for preventing further spread in case of detection of infected employees including travel plans and quarantine requirements.

2) RBI asked banks to take stock of critical processes and revisiting business continuity plan (BCP) with the aim of continuity in critical interfaces and preventing any disruption of services, due to absenteeism either driven by the individual cases of infections or preventive measures.

3) Banks have been asked to taking steps of sharing important instructions/ strategy with the staff members at all levels, for soliciting better response and participation and sensitizing the staff members about preventive measures/steps to be taken in suspected cases, based on the instructions received from health authorities, from time-to-time

4) Finance institutions have been asked to encourage their customers to use digital banking facilities as far as possible.

6) Entities should also assess the impact on their balance sheet, asset quality, liquidity, etc. arising out of potential scenarios such as further spread of COVID-19 in India and its effect on the economy, contagion from wider disruption in the global economy and the global financial system, etc and based on the above studies, they should take immediate contingency measures to manage the risks, RBI said.

6) As the situation requires to be monitored closely, both from business and social perspective, a quick response Team may be constituted for the purpose, which shall provide regular updates to the top management on significant developments and act as a single point of contact with regulators/outside institutions/agencies, RBI added

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

this instructions are quiet meaningless in context of the disease(covid 19) control.RBI must prefer HR safety first rather than looking for impact of the disease on balance sheet.

Anonymous said...

this instructions are quiet meaningless in context of the disease(covid 19) control.RBI must prefer HR safety first rather than looking for impact of the disease on balance sheet.

Bob said...

There is no local train in Mumbai for transportation,neither bank has provided transport,no auto no taxi ready to travel. Under this circumstances,only local staff attending office.
In this case, we ,so many could not attend office.
Whether we will get special leave under this circumstances?