Amendments in PH Bank Secrecy Law Amendment Needed: IMF

Amendments in the Philippine bank secrecy law is needed to further improve regulation of financial institutions, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

IMF said in its financial sector assessment program report that Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) regulatory framework is effective for the complexity of the country’s banking system, but may improve on bank supervision.

“is broadly effective for the size and complexity of the Philippine banking system, but legislative gaps continue to hinder effective supervision of banks,” the report said.

IMF attributes the restricting factor in BSP’s ability for bank supervision lies to the Philippine bank secrecy law.

IMF further added that the central bank should have full-access to information on all customer accounts, instead of considering bank deposits to be “of an absolutely confidential nature.”

“BSP should be granted unimpaired access to information on all customer accounts, and the ability, without constraints, to employ and share depositor information for any prudential purpose (e.g., funding concentrations from related parties, intra-group dependencies, cash flow analysis, related-party transactions (RPT) and off-site anti-money laundering (AML) data and analysis) in order to fulfill its supervisory mandate to address safety and soundness concerns,” the report said. (GFB)