National Bank of Bahrain B.S.C has been established in the Kingdom of Bahrain since 1957 as a conventional retail bank licensed, regulated and supervised by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB). NBB is a public share holding company listed in Bahrain Bourse.
The CBB requires all conventional banks in Bahrain to comply with the applicable laws, regulations and must implement programmes against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing by establishing and maintaining appropriate systems and controls to limit the vulnerability to Financial Crime. Specifically, as a condition of the banking license granted to each bank, the CBB requires banks to comply with all aspects of legislation and regulations related to anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing mandated by the Financial Crime Module of the CBB, including Customer Due Diligence (CDD) rules outlined in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision paper and FATF 40 recommendations.
NBB complies in full with the relevant legislations, CBB rules and guidance of the Financial Crime Module, which is based on the principles of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Processes implemented by NBB include the following.
- An independent AML Department has been established which is in charge of the Bank’s Anti-money laundering Function. This Department handles the reporting of suspicious transactions to the relevant authorities.
- Customer identification procedures, Know Your Customer (KYC) must always be complied with both at the time of establishing business relations and thereafter on an on-going basis. The key elements of our customer screening and monitoring procedures are (i) verifying the identity of the customer and the source of funds prior establishing a relationship (ii) account transaction monitoring mechanism and reporting of suspicious transactions involved in money laundering or other unlawful activities to the appropriate local supervisory regulatory authority (iii) enhanced due diligence (EDD) on customers considered as higher risk category (iv) record- keeping, compliance systems and inspections by audit and regulatory authority.
- On-going account monitoring of PEP-accounts is implemented.
- Regular employee training programs are held bank-wide to spread awareness among employees to identify suspicious activities, actions to be taken on detection of such activity and on reporting mechanisms.
- NBB is fully committed to remaining vigilant to prevent the use of our products and services by those who seek to abuse them. Operating procedures are reviewed and updated regularly to ensure that the impact of changes in legislation or guidelines is incorporated immediately.
- Adequate procedures are in place to ensure that reporting takes place without disclosure of the employee’s identity thus providing them protection from adverse reactions.
- National Bank of Bahrain B.S.C is compliant with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) Regulations. And NBB has been included in the first list of participating Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) on the IRS website.
- Regular, independent internal and external audits are conducted to ensure that the Bank fulfills its obligations under the Anti-Money laundering and combating terrorist financing rules and the Bank’s procedures.