The Bangladesh Bank (BB) has instructed all scheduled banks to create and maintain a citizen charter with details on all of their services in order to guarantee better financial services and protect consumers' rights.
On Monday, the Banking Regulation and Policy Department (BRPD) of the central bank released a circular regarding this and forwarded it to the heads of banks for prompt action.
The instructions state that a citizen's charter should be created to detail a category list of all bank services, the qualifications and documentation needed to receive each service, the process for preparing the documents, the minimum amount of time needed to provide each service, the service fee, and what to do in the event that the citizen is not provided with the service.
The bank's website should then post this information. In addition, it should be displayed at the corporate headquarters and branches.
At the head office of each bank, a monitoring committee (consisting of at least seven members) and a citizen charter team/branch/cell shall be established to verify services are provided in accordance with the charter. To educate bank staff on how to properly apply the charter, at least four training sessions should be held annually.
The official stated that once the banks start implementing the citizen's charter, the central bank hopes that customer harassment will significantly decrease.
