Bank Indonesia aims to improve skills of banks' staffs
Bank Indonesia aims to improve skills of banks' staffs
The Jakarat Post, Jakarta
Bank Indonesia will require staff members at the country's banks
to receive competence certification in their respective fields as
part of the effort to improve the banking industry.
The head of the financial system stability division at the
central bank, Mulyaman Hadad, was quoted by Antara as saying on
Saturday the certification requirement would also help push
banks' staffs to continue to improve their expertise.
As an example, he said a credit analyst would be required to
have competence in the area of risk analysis in a number of
economic sectors such as agriculture, information technology,
etc.
Mulyaman said the banking sector was weak in credit risk
management partly because most bank employees were only able to
analyze credit risk in the consumer sector.
This is seen as a contributing factor to the rejection of many
of the credit proposals from the corporate sector.
It is still not clear, however, when the new certification
requirement would be implemented.
The central bank has been aggressive in cutting its benchmark
interest rate in the hope that lending rates will also drop,
thereby boosting new loans to the corporate sector to help
accelerate economic growth.
But loans to the corporate sector have remained low as most
banks, just recovering from the late 1990s financial crisis,
still consider it risky investing in local companies given the
slow progress in restructuring corporate debt.
Analysts have also said that the costly banking crisis was
partly the result of the past weak risk management of banks in
lending money to corporations.
Mulyaman said the central bank would cooperate with the
Association of National Private Banks and the Association of
State Banks in issuing competence certifications and designing a
curriculum for banking courses.
He said that eventually the certificates would be issued by a
special institution.
"There will be a new institution assigned to issue the
certificates, but this must be approved by all the banks so that
there will be confidence in the program," he said.
Supervisory staff at Bank Indonesia will also be required to
receive competence certification.
"The certification will be issued by an institution outside
Bank Indonesia," he said.
Bank Indonesia's banking supervisory role has been criticized
following the recent emergence of lending scams at Bank BNI and
Bank BRI.