One bank has been introduced to Majlis Article 90 Commission for refusing to disclose information about big loans to the Central Bank of Iran to be publicly announced, the CBI deputy for supervision affairs said.
The official did not name the bank, as is often the case in similar dismaying circumstances.
“Any bank that does not send regular data on major loans, beneficiaries and defaulters to the CBI will see its dossier in the Majlis Article 90 Commission and the Supreme Audit Court,” Abouzar Soroush was quoted by IRNA as saying.
The commission is a non-specialized permanent body of the parliament. Its members monitor, among other things, the process of valuation and pricing (of assets) of merged banks and post-merger staff issues.
As per the 2022-23 fiscal budget, the CBI is obliged to publicly announce the names of defaulters and update reports on a quarterly basis.
Soroush said reviewing the performance of banks, namely data on major loans and the recipients, is indeed a time-consuming process and for bigger banks, like the state-owned Bank Melli Iran, it takes even more time.
“We have no integrated system to assess and identify the loans, recipients and defaulters. The CBI receives data from banks and after a great deal of endurance and possibly several back-and-forth information with lenders, verifies and publishes it.”
The CBI earlier said that in the absence of robust supervision and lack of integrated bank data, banks gave unusually big loans without proper collateral, apparently in breach of banking regulations.
Over the years, such dubious lending resulted in large NPLs undermining the role and viability of banks in no small number.
To improve oversight on lending, the regulator has designed a system that accesses data banks and allows direct interaction among bank branches, sharing customer data and helping lenders better monitor the eligibility of loan applicants.
Dubbed “Samat”, the system gives banks online access to data about borrower profile, issued bank guarantees and outstanding debts.
“Currently, no loans can be granted without first being registered on ‘Samat’. CBI inspectors are on the watch for any wrongdoing and report infringements to the relevant office,” the senior bank official said.
The system is touted to increase transparency in lending and help cut risks to banks. Commending the role of Samat in restoring much-needed discipline to lending, Mostafa Qamari-Vafa, head of the CBI public relations department told IBENA, that the platform automatically eliminates unruly borrowers from the lending process.
Samat updates the creditworthiness of customers on a daily basis and relays data to bank branches across the country. Under the new system, banks disqualify defaulters even if they put up proper collateral but failed to repay past debts in a timely manner.
The CBI recently obliged banks to concentrate on the credit rating of customers and make valid and verifiable inquiries of loan applicants before lending.
