BNM wants more banks to join Agent Banking Programme

Another subject that is close to my heart i.e. financial inclusion. Bank Negara Malaysia has done a lot in realising the national financial inclusion agenda.

What is financial inclusion? In simple term, it means to ensure that all walk of life, regardless his/her background has easy access to financial services.

One of the measures is the implementation of agent banking, whereby banks appoint reliable agents to undertake on-site premise secured banking transactions.

Currently BSN and two commercial banks, namely Maybank and RHB are offering this facility and hopefully more and more banks will come on board.

So guys, look out for this logo when you want to do banking transactions in places where there is no physical presence of a bank branch.

Bank Negara Wants More Banks To Join Agent Banking Programme

KUALA KRAI, June 14 (Bernama) -- Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) wants more financial institutions to participate in the agent banking programme which will benefit those living in rural areas where it was difficult to enjoy banking services.

Its director of development financial and enterprise department, Kamari Zaman Juhari, said since its introduction in 2010, only three banking groups -- Malayan Banking, RHB Bank and Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) -- had participated in the programme.

"We want to encourage more banks to join and now many of them have shown interest.

"An institution will undertake a detailed study before deciding to participate in the programme which has received an encouraging response from those living in the rural areas," he told reporters after officiating BSN's two-day community programme here today.

Also present were BSN's senior vice-president/head of community business department, Azaddin Ngah Tasir.

Kamari Zaman said at end-April this year, the banks had appointed over 4,000 agents like Pos Malaysia Bhd, petrol stations, sundry shops and telecommunication companies' agents, involving transactions of over RM760 million.

"Since the introduction of this service, over 86 per cent of the districts in the country have access to the banking services compaerd with only 46 per cent at end-2011.

He said Maybank, CIMB and Public Bank cooperated with telecommunication companies early this year to offer MyMobile service to mobile phone users.

"About 100,000 users are using the service involving RM4.2 million in transactions," he said.

Meanwhile, Azaddin said BSN has over 4,000 registered bank agents nationwide handling over 6.5 million transactions worth RM580 million

He said the registered bank agent service was an innovative service offered by BSN to help those in the rural areas which had no banking services.

-- BERNAMA

Agent Banking? Apa Tu?

Some of you might have noticed the advert below by Bank Simpanan Nasional.

This is another initiative to ensure more Malaysians have access to basic financial services. Due to geographical and logistic issues, financial institutions are facing difficulty to establish physical presence in each corners of Malaysia. Now, with agent banking framework, financial institutions are allowed to appoint qualified agents to conduct basic financial services with unserved customers on behalf of the financial institution.

A guidelines will be issued by BNM to ensure this initiative will be implemented safely, efficiently and effectively and more importantly will safeguard the interest of consumers.

BSN has just started theirs and the Government has set a target of 5,000 agents nationwide. But I'm not sure whether the target is for BSN or for the financial sector.

I've read somewhere that some people in Sarawak had to spend two to three days to the nearest town in order to perform banking transactions.

I believe this effort, coupled with existing physical branch, internet banking and mobile banking would facilitate the aspiration of financial inclusion.