Bangladesh Central Bank Developing KYC Form To Combat Illegal Transfers

October 21, 2007 12:44 p.m. EST

Siddique Islam - AHN South Asia Correspondent
Dhaka, Bangladesh (AHN) - The Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country's central bank, will introduce an identical "Know Your Customer (KYC)" form for commercial banks to help combat illegal fund transfers.

"We are now working to introduce such form to collect similar information from all banks that will also help strengthen our monitoring system," a senior bank official told AHN in Dhaka.

Currently, banks are using different types of forms for preparing KYC profiles on the basis of information, provided by the account holders, to assess financial risk. However, a six-member committee, headed by Deputy General Manager of the Anti-Money Laundering Department of the BB Swapan Kumar Biswas, is working on a unified, standardized form.

The central bank earlier instructed the banks to maintain 'the transaction profile method' properly for opening of any accounts under KYC system to check suspicious transactions. Under the existing Anti-Money Laundering Act, banks are required to inform the Anti-Money Laundering Department of the central bank if it detects any suspicious transactions.

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