Abu Dhabi: The UAE Banks Federation (UBF), a professional representative body representing 50 member banks operating in the UAE, has reaffirmed its strong and full support for the government’s initiative to reduce the serious debt burden being experienced by some UAE Nationals.
The Federation has urged its member banks to co-operate in the scheme and continue to coordinate with its member banks to support this important national initiative. For the past 12 months, the UBF has been encouraging all members to focus on promoting financial literacy and responsibility programmes which will help to prevent such indebtedness recurring in the future.
“As a UAE national financial institution, the Emirati segment is of critical focus to us and Mashreq has supported the relief fund from inception. We are also conscious of our corporate social responsibility and consider this as a noble cause and we confirm that Mashreq has no outstanding cases of indebted Emiratis as we have ensured putting together a committee within the bank to follow up and finalize all restructuring debts related to the relief fund and we have succeeded in that,” said Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, CEO of Mashreq.
To reflect the importance that the federation places on this initiative, the topic is scheduled to be discussed as top priority at its forthcoming advisory council meeting.
The UBF’s call on its members to cooperate with the programme follows a warning issued by Ahmad Al Zaabi, Deputy Minister of Presidential Affairs last week that banks that do not cooperate will be named and shamed.
Under the debt settlement scheme announced in 2011 a Dh10 billion fund was created to help settle the bank debt outstandings of UAE citizens. As part of the scheme signatory banks were required to waive 50 per cent of these loan outstanding while the other half were to be settled through the loan fund which should eventually be paid in instalments to the fund from debtor’s source of income.
