Banks across India are working at almost full strength to ensure availability of essential banking services to their customers amid a global health crisis. CNBC-TV18 spoke to a handful of top public and private banks to assess the preventive measures being put in place to ensure business continuity keeping the safety of employees in mind.
One of the top private banks in the country told CNBC-TV18 that the bank’s branches are fully functional, and no rotational shifts or work from home policies are being implemented as of now. “Banking is an essential service, we can't just ask our employees to leave,” said a senior executive from this bank.
“Whatever corporate functions can be carried out from outside locations or homes are being carried out remotely,” he added, saying whoever has requested for leaves due to health reasons has been granted leaves, but branches have the usual number of employees to carry out day to day functions.
Another private banker said banking services cannot be scaled back unless there are clear instructions from the government or the regulator to do so, adding that no work from home policy has been implemented so far.
The umbrella body for all banks in the country, Indian Banks Association, said it will shortly be issuing an advisory to all banks to measures to ensure business continuity amid the novel coronavirus spread.
“Just yesterday at 5 pm we had a meeting with all the MDs of banks on videoconferencing. We have deliberated on these issues to prepare a plan, and send advisories to banks to make business continuity plans, (including) staggering of duties so that public services are not impacted and continuity of services is also maintained" Sunil Mehta, Chief Executive Officer of the Indian Banks Association told CNBC-TV18 over the phone.
IBA is likely to issue this advisory to banks by tomorrow. "Banking services are a bit different from others services. Large number of people are (used to) habitually coming to bank branches, and they need to be serviced. Even in disaster situations like floods, we make banking services available to people” Mehta added.
One of the largest public sector bank executive said that the bank has ensured sufficient safety measures are being taken, including providing sanitizers and masks to employees at branches. “We cannot close down branches, that is not an option for us,” he said. “The government has to take a call on curtailing services, we can only advise our staff to take all precautions,” the executive added.
He explained that certain online transactions are still required to be cleared manually, “Our staff has to be in the bank centers to clear online transactions before they are finally settled by RBI. We don’t have an automatic process for it yet,” he quipped.
The Reserve Bank of India issued an advisory to banks just yesterday, asking banks to put in place business continuity plans to prevent any disruption of services due to coronavirus outbreak. "Several confirmed cases have also been detected in India, which highlight the need of a coordinated strategy for handling the emerging situations for protecting the resilience of the Indian financial system," RBI said in a statement.
"Encourage their customers to use digital banking facilities as far as possible. As the situation requires to be monitored closely, both from business and social perspective, a Quick Response Team may be constituted for the purpose, which shall provide regular updates to the top management on significant developments and act as a single point of contact with regulators/outside institutions/agencies," the Reserve Bank of India said.
