NBI concludes National Conference on 'Asset and Liability Management'

National Banking Institute (NBI) concluded one day National Conference on "Asset and

Liability Management" on Tuesday, 25th September, 2018 in Kathmandu. A day-long event in

Kathmandu was attended by senior professional from banking and financial industry from

Senior Executives, Head of Department, Branch Managers, Internal Auditors, and Finance &

Planning Departments to Treasury Staff. The participations were from banks, and financial

institutions, regulatory bodies and the academic institutions.

The increasing trend of market risk has brought pressure on the banks management to maintain

a good balance in profitability and long term-viability. Due to these pressures the banks need to

plan their corporate strategy for decision making on a dynamic and integrated risk management

system & process. The conference sessions was designed in consultation with the Treasury

Heads of various Banks responsible for the major financial risk management challenges within

their banks.

The topics related to the Asset Liability management were presented by International seasoned

experts. Mr. Charan Rawat, Former Chief Governance Officer, Barclays Bank India presented on

the Regulatory Perspective on Asset Liability Management. He highlighted on the need for

Liquidity Management in order to align the asymmetrical Bank’s assets and liabilities and also

the expectations of the regulators in terms of well thought out ALM policy, contingency and

liquidity impact assessment on growth of product lines.

Mr. K. Mohan Bhaktha, Executive Director of Weizmann Forex Ltd., presented his insights on

the effective foreign exchange risk management system. The international speakers presented

the overview on the occurrence of the Global Financial Crisis and the international best

practices for mitigating such crisis in future. The speakers further elaborated on risk

management process and procedures

Mr. Gunakar Bhatta, Director, Research Department presented on the Macroeconomic

Perspectives on Asset and Liability Management in the local perspective. The session was

followed by a panel discussion with the eminent industry experts Mr. Sashin Joshi, Banking

Expert, Mr. Anal Raj Bhattarai, Banking Expert and Mr. Sarbendra Mishra, Chairman, FEDAN.

The session was moderated by Banking Expert Mr. Bashudev Adhikari. The discussion aimed to

take the best advantage of learning and sharing opportunity at large and further responded the

queries of the participants during panel discussion.

Mr. Joshi focused on bank’s urgency towards planning any foreseen crisis through discussion

forums, projection of trend analysis and externalities as the utmost priority. Further, he

deliberated that bank’s shall not compromise on the building of robust ALCO management

process as it play a major role in mitigating financial crisis to some extent. On the other hand,

Mr. Bhattarai emphasized on the proper design of the ALM framework and also highlighted that

financial fragility drives financial crisis which can be minimized through Asset and Liability

Management. Mr. Mishra assured that current exchange rate fluctuation would not affect

Nepalese Banking.