Dhaka Bank to embrace massive digitisation

Dhaka Bank Limited is looking for massive digitisation of its banking procedures in the coming months, the top executive of the leading private commercial bank (PCB) said this week.

The second generation PCB is aiming to automate a number of its core banking processes by the end of this year, its Managing Director and CEO Syed Mahbubur Rahman said.

"In the digital space, we want to create some noteworthy achievements", Syed Mahbubur said in an exclusive interview with the FE.

Dhaka Bank, which is currently celebrating its 23rd anniversary, is planning to launch contactless cards for its customers within the next two months, the CEO revealed.

"Payment technology company Visa has identified six banks for launching its contactless NFC cards in Bangladesh and Dhaka Bank is one of them", he said.

Highlighting the ongoing digitisation drive in his company, the Dhaka Bank CEO mentioned that the bank has recently automated its personal loan processing scheme and is now piloting the system.

"The SME loan processing scheme will also get automated by the end of third quarter", he noted.

"We have also centralised our trade and credit system while the documentation process will also get centralised by the end of this year", Syed Mahbubur said.

Recently, Dhaka Bank has also adopted a new core banking software called Oracle Super Cluster.

"We are the first bank in South Asia to adopt this software", he noted.

"We have also brought our credit card and debit card system into a single platform while our account opening process has already been centralised".

Earlier, Dhaka Bank Ltd (DBL) also introduced its own mobile app 'Dhaka Bank GO' for its customers.

"This is the first banking app in Bangladesh which is integrated with mobile financial service provider bKash- meaning that our customers can now transfer money to bKash directly using this app", the DBL MD mentioned.

"We have also introduced TradeCloud to facilitate trade transaction of our customers while we also launched "BillToCash" scheme for SMEs", he added. 

"Currently, we are looking to diversify our loan portfolio so that at least 40 per cent of our total loan portfolio consists of consumers and SMEs by 2019", he said.

Rising amount of non-performing loan has long been a major concern for the country's banking sector.

Commenting on the issue, Mr Mahbub, who is also the Chairman of the Association of Bankers, Bangladesh, observed that enforcement of law is crucial for addressing the growing NPL volume in the banking industry of the country.

"Huge backlog of case in our judicial system means that it takes eight to ten years to settle a case and some wilful defaulters use it to their advantage", he said.

"This is where the banking sector, judiciary, regulator and the government need to work together".

"There are also some areas of reform. For example, there is no separate bench in the High Court to deal with loan default. At the same time, there is also a lack of competent judges to deal with loan default issues", he noted.

The value of US dollar against Taka is following an upward trend for more than a year. As per the central bank web site data, the exchange rate of dollar, which was Tk 78.7 in January last year, increased to Tk 80.6 in June last year, Tk 82.9 in January this year and Tk 83.75 on Monday.

When his attention was drawn on the issue, the ABB Chairman cautioned that the ongoing appreciation of US dollar against Taka is likely to continue if the export does not get a major boost.

"This is because the import is likely to rise as the price of oil is going up in the international market while the country will also import LNG and LPG in the coming months. Notably, these are all essential items".

"We have to take our export growth to double digit while trying to check the import growth", said Mr Mahbub. 

"We need to diversify our export basket while exploring new markets in the emerging economies", he said.

"We also have to identify the luxury items which are now being imported and need to see whether there are ways to rein in that flow", he added.

Dhaka Bank started its journey back in 1995 and got listed on both the bourses back in 2000. The bank's total paid-up capital, as of March 2018, stood at Tk. 7,222,957,200. Its operating profit, at the same time, reached Tk. 1,203,380,897, up from Tk. 1,158,125,559 just a year ago.   

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