Thursday, March 28, 2024

SBP launched digital portal for FX regulatory approval requests

State Bank of Pakistan has launched a newly digital Foreign exchange portal for the end to end digitalization of exchange requests at the early stage,13 banks are entertained in this digital proces, SBP also confirmed other remaining banks will also be incorporated soon.

State Bank of Pakistan always endeavours to facilitate general public and business community for innovative and efficient financial services every day, the State Bank of Pakistan and its subsidiary SBP banking services Corporation receive hundreds of cases with bundles of paper documents for regulatory approvals.

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These documents are preserved in multiple copies by every stakeholder, from customers to banks and from banks to SBP. This requires extensive logistics services, which give rise to substantial costs, inherent delays and overhead to bring efficiency and transparency in the process.

And to promote ease of doing business in the country. The State Bank of Pakistan under its knowledge management programme is strategized to develop a centralised online platform to prepare, submit and process the cases. In its phase one digitalization of cases for foreign exchange from banks to SBP was undertaken.

The types of cases include approval for outward remittances, foreign investments, foreign loans, government subsidies, acknowledgement of foreign agreements, and international trade. The system has been made simple, standardised and secure for the users.

A front end portal protected by Transport Layer Security and two factor authentication provides a ubiquitous access to all the banks a simple three step process. Let's authorise dealers, fill up web forms, attach required documents and submit the case.

Every case is assigned a unique number. The system at back end assigns case requests to dealing Officer of SBP based on round robin algorithm. After due diligence, the case is processed as per applicable laws, rules and regulations. After processing the case internally, a decision letter is generated by the system and is sent to the bank.

The bank can download decision letter from the same portal having a digital signature of SPP. To apprise, the stakeholders about progress of the case, system generated emails are sent to the banker and to the requesting customer. The customers have also been provided visibility through state bank's website.

enterprise content management engine stores these cases and all related documents making case file for every request with the ability to search contents. This initiative will increase efficiency and transparency and will promote ease of doing business in the country. It will also result in cost saving from paper reduction, logistics and administrative efforts to manage volume newspapers.

This is the start of a new journey with first generation have the system meeting most requirements of the industry. In future this system will be enhanced to include other regulatory departments of SBP.

In Phase two banks in Pakistan in collaboration with SBP have also developed online portals for the clients resulting into end to end digitalization of the complete process. This new digital ecosystem is a collaborative effort of State Bank of Pakistan, STP banking services Corporation and the banking sector to facilitate businesses.

List of the Banks for Fx digital portal

  1. Allied Bank Ltd
  2. Bank Al-Falah Ltd
  3. Faysal Bank Ltd
  4. Habib Bank Ltd
  5. Habib Metropolitan Bank Ltd
  6. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
  7. MCB Bank Ltd
  8. Meezan Bank Ltd
  9. Sindh Bank Ltd
  10. Soneri Bank Ltd
  11. Standard Chartered Bank (Pakistan) Ltd
  12. The Bank of Punjab
  13. United Bank Ltd

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