Whistle-blowing in Banks explained

The banks are financial institutions licensed to receive deposits and make loans. Apart from collecting deposits and lending banks are handling cash transactions, Ancillary Services to their customers. To gain the confidence of customers’ banks need to maintain the highest standards of honest and ethical conduct in the course of all their operations. Although profitability is the target of their business like any other business, they have to follow strict compliance with certain professional and organizational ethics principles.
Every employee is accountable for his/her job duties during performance of banking services. Employees are the one who come across irregularities at workplace at the initial stages. They have to be watchful what is happening in and around them. If the colleagues or bosses promote unethical activities, to derive any personal benefits for themselves or for others out of their own work environments or their customers’ facilities by using their job positions and duties; such activities should be reported to higher authorities. However, many employees worry about the ramifications of reporting unethical activities. This is because in many cases the people behaving illegally are higher-ups in the Bank. They don’t want to damage their career or incur the wrath of the offender or they simply do not know how to report such activities.
When an employee passes on information concerning wrongdoing at the workplace is known as whistleblowing. The common belief among bank employees is that their bank does not encourage whistle-blowing nor protect them from the offenders if they report. Therefore, the Board of Banks must consider framing Whistle Blowing policy and offering optimal support from the bank to the employees in using whistle whistle-blowing mechanism. There should be dissemination of Information about the meaning and concept of the Whistleblowers Protection Act. Employees should know and understand the whistle-blowing policies of the organization. Also, the code of ethics instructions of the organization shall give guidance to the employees as well as competent authorities of the bank about how to report (anonymously, if the complainant wishes to do so) any known or suspected violation of the Code of Ethics or any other matters that inflict financial loss or bad reputation to the institution. The employees must be encouraged and must be given protection for disclosing irregularities in the bank.
The Whistleblower protection act 2014 and an amendment to the above act in 2015 provide a mechanism to investigate alleged corruption and misuse of power by public servants and also protect anyone who exposes alleged wrongdoing in government bodies, projects, and offices. However, companies don’t need to have Whistleblowing policies, but they have to disclose all in their reports on corporate governance to the extent of the non-mandatory practices. Though the Act makes a provision for Anonymous Disclosures, the Competent Authority formed under the Act does not talk about complete anonymous disclosure. The entire Act deals with protecting whistleblowers from their victimization, but the word victimization is not defined anywhere. The Act makes provision for revealing the identity of the Whistleblower which is a riskier proposition as there is a chance of the whistleblower being victimized. It does not provide any incentive to the whistle-blower. The law should be suitably amended to define victimisation and also incentives to Whistleblowers whose disclosures are proven to be correct after the hearing and have substance. The witnesses who come up to validate the disclosure made by the Whistleblower during the stage of inquiry should be provided with protection so that the offenders are not left scot-free due to non-proving of the disclosure made by the Whistleblower. The honest people should be protected from frivolous complaints, the Government should find a way to screen and deal with frivolous complaints. Taking away the provision for anonymous complaints complicates the process of whistle-blowing and discourages people from coming forward with their complaints.

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