Bank Alfalah – A Responsible Bank

We all know that responsible banking conduct is not only an imperative measure for sustainable growth but also plays an important role in building consumer confidence, which is fundamental to the stability and efficiency of the banking sector.

At Bank Alfalah, we are committed to operate ethically and responsibly to keep the customer’s interests at the heart of our business.

To bring improvement in conduct of the bank and ensure responsible banking, we have implemented various controls and monitoring tools under the guidelines & instructions received from SBP that include, but not limited to, “Fair Treatment of Customer Policy”, “Conduct Assessment Framework – Self-assessment”, “Prohibited of Banking Conducts”, etc.

Fair Treatment of Customer – The FTC policy includes providing customers quality in services and innovative range of banking products without discrimination. Such stance is only possible if the customer is treated fairly throughout the product life cycle from product design to promotion, including complaints and claims handling, and throughout the product value chain.

For this, we have implemented Financial Consumer Protection Framework that needs to be followed to ensure the Fair Treatment of Customers (FTC).

Conduct Assessment Framework (CAF) Self-assessment – To quantify the bank’s conduct, and develop a periodic, reliable, diagnostic and comparable mechanism, we undertake an annual self-assessment review of CAF defined controls. CAF Self-assessment helps us to identify grey areas and eventually helps bank to improve conduct.

Prohibited Banking Conduct Guidelines – To complement and reinforce the existing instructions and guidelines on responsible business conduct issued by SBP, Prohibited Banking Conduct Guidelines have been incorporated in our existing FTC policy. The main purpose of these guidelines are:

• To ensure that consumers are not provided with misleading or deceptive information in connection with a service or product.
• To prevent unreasonable business practices that intimidate or exploit consumers.
• To prevent business practices that restrict the freedom of consumers to choose between services or products available to them; and
• To prevent collusive business practices that may result in unfavorable outcomes to consumers.