Dubai: The UAE Banks Federation (UBF), a professional body representing 50 member banks operating in the UAE has emerged as a key coordinator of the UAE’s financial services sector with all stake holders according to its latest annual report published on Sunday.

Last year, the UBF was instrumental in leading initiatives such as the Interim Marginal Lending Facility, the UAE Mobile Wallet project, SME [small and medium enterprises] financing and the launch of the Al Etihad Credit Bureau in last September, to name a few.

“Discussion of best practice, identification of threats to the industry and development of common positions on issues of significance to member banks continued to be the principle goals of all the Federation specialised committees. Some noteworthy examples of the subject areas focused on in 2014 included SME financing, Close-Out Netting, Anti-Money Laundering, Customer Charter and Emiratisation,” said Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair Chairman of the UBF.

In 2014 the UBF worked closely with the UAE Central Bank to launch the Interim Marginal Lending Facility, which allows banks to access support from the Central Bank on an overnight basis against eligible securities as collateral.

The UBF said the work on the implementation of the mobile wallet project is progressing on schedule and when implemented the platform has the potential to make the UAE a truly digital economy where both smart phones and feature phones can be used to access banking services. It will also make the UAE on par with developed financial markets such as the USA, UK and Japan.

In the launch of the credit bureau, the UBF has been instrumental in ensuring the full support of its member banks to the project. The Credit Bureau started releasing its credit reports on consumers from September 2014.

Service standards

The Customer Charter, launched early in 2015, is a voluntary Code of Conduct adopted by members of the UBF to provide bank customers in the UAE with clear guidelines about service standards from banks. The UBF has been working on an initiative to enhance the banking sector funding of the SME sector.

The Islamic Banking Committee of the Federation has launched initiatives to develop the regulatory environment for Islamic banking in the UAE. The Committee has put forward a proposal to establish a Sharia-compliant Governance Unit at the Central Bank. The main objective of this initiative is to create guidelines and policies that are applicable to all types of Islamic financial institutions.