Opening an account for low-risk persons who will be depositing less than $500,000 monthly will be made easier soon as the Central Bank is set to issue a directive to commercial banks to this end, Governor Gobind Ganga says.
“It is to ease the hassle for especially lower risk customers going in there…when you go to open a bank account, you understand the hassle with them and that process; proof of address and all of that. So now you sign an attestation form, for example…,” Ganga told Stabroek News last Friday.
“We will soon issue a circular…it has to be gazetted first but we are making the banks make it easier for low-risk persons doing banking, where they don’t have to go through all of that with the banks…,” he added.
The Central Bank Governor’s announcement came following a meeting held with the private sector, civil society and other stakeholders and President Irfaan Ali, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, Prime Minister Mark Phillips and Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh.
At that meeting, Jagdeo bemoaned the process that persons have to follow in opening an account here as compared to the developed world.
It’s causing disintermediation here. People are scared of going in the banks. I am scared of filling up these forms. I can’t navigate through them. It is so complex. ” he said.
“Scotiabank in Canada, [they] don’t ask if you are taking out $40 [what you are doing with it]…here, I gather you have to do a number of things. It [seems] you have to take off your shirt to show…” he added.
President Ali compared the time-consuming process here to the ease of transactions overseas. “…You can go to some of these sophisticated markets and open an account in 20 minutes and the same person will come here and have to pass though some hurdles that is imposed that will take you two weeks or two months to open the account,” the President said.
Managing Director of Citizens Bank, Eton Chester posited that “the commercial banks are only following the directive of the Central Bank”.
But the Central Bank has always maintained that banks can go through the regulatory processes and maintain the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism compliance programme without the hassle they put their customers through.
Ganga said that banks here make it burdensome on persons especially in providing proof of address with hard copy mails that have to be traced to a post office. “The issue here is when you open a bank account they ask for address, for example, but because, say a young student that now began work is living with parents they would not get a bill and they get emails mostly,” he reasoned.
“We try to get an attestation instead of source (document) for customers and all of that. In any one of our regulations there is always flexibility,” he said while pointing out that even now there are measures that can be activated but they are rarely done so by banks. “If you go to the bank and you don’t have your ID a supervisor can vouch” for you, he noted.
