Will review current systems in wake of forex scam: SBI MD

A: I have taken charge as MD compliance and risk in the bank. So obviously my priorities are going to be how we can improve the compliance culture in bank and also bring the risk management to the focus within the bank. To ensure that the bank comes out of the trouble times that we are having at this point of time, where the entire sector is stressed. Most of the stress at this point of time have been in the infrastructure sector, the power or the iron and steel. So I think we have already looking at how to address that, how to contain our exposure to these sectors and whatever efforts can be made to see that our existing exposures starts working that is the main objective at this point of time.

Q: As a compliance and risk officer you have seen the Bank of Baroda (BoB) money laundering case came to fore recently, what are the systems that SBI has put into place to ensure that such frauds do not occur. You have your early warning systems for non-performing loans (NPLs) but to prevent such frauds, what are the systems you will pull into place?

A: For this particular case, I think we already have a lot of system in place. We have a huge anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (ALM/CFT) set up which is based out of Jaipur, which on a daily basis goes through all the alerts that a system generates and they have religiously been filing all the suspicious transaction reports (STRs) with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) also. So we do have a lot of systems in place.

So in the light of what has happened in BoB and some or the other banks, we are reviewing the existing systems and if we think there are some shortcomings, we will be plugging those loopholes also.