Asia-Pacific

Technology has displaced the 2008 financial crisis as the main issue driving the international regulatory agenda, says a new report from Thomson Reuters.

The bill proposes that the BSP grant five virtual bank licences every year for at least five years, and to allow both financial and non-financial firms to apply.

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal says banks have a final deadline of 1 April to bring down the maximum lending rate to 9% and the maximum deposit rate to 6%.

Eight banks will be penalised for failure to lower lending rates by a 27 December 2019 deadline set by the central bank in September last year, intended to ensure the public benefits from monetary policy decisions.

Bankers can be disqualified and placed on a watchlist for causing undue injury, material loss or damage to a bank, or for exposing it to higher risk or danger.

Universal banks, commercial banks and their subsidiary thrift banks and quasi-banks are required to submit the 'report on intraday liquidity' by end-June 2021, and every month thereafter.

The BSP has released guidelines for the establishment of Islamic banks and Islamic banking units in the Philippines, along with a newly-approved Shari’ah governance framework.

The new implementing guidelines address concerns over the effect of SBL and short selling transactions on trading participants’ books and records, error transactions, and capital adequacy.

Existing payment system operators were given until 1 January to register with the BSP. This has been extended to 1 April 2020.

APAC regulators are looking to FIs and their technology to guard against increasingly sophisticated criminal activity as wealth migration accelerates, says Joseph Quiazon at Exiger.