In an effort to curb corruption in the financial sector, the Financial Institutions Training Institute, FITI in collaboration with the Anti-Corruption Commission, has launched a new training curriculum. Called the “Code of Ethics, Integrity, and Accountability for Financial Service Providers”, the training is designed to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of the ethical responsibilities, principles of integrity, and the importance of professionalism in the financial sector.
In the recently published National Integrity Assessment Report 2022, the country’s overall National Integrity score is recorded at 8.01, depicting a Good Level of integrity.
The assessment measures the level of integrity on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is highly corrupt and 10 is very clean.
However, the report said that weak accountability culture in the form of public officials ignoring official duties, abuse of functions, and ineffective redressal of complaints require improvement.
And the training is an initiative to strengthen these areas.
During the launch, officials from FITI and the ACC said that such training would emphasize the importance of fostering a culture of ethics and integrity as instrumental in mitigating corrupt practices.
“Financial institutions hold vast amounts of money from their clients in their institutions, be it banking, insurance company or non-banking. And that money has to be taken care of. As an employee of a financial service provider, the employee should act with utmost honesty and integrity to ensure that the money in their institutes is protected,” said Yeshey Lhamo, Programme Coordinator of FITI.
The three-day training programme for financial service providers will feature interactive sessions and practical exercises, including analysis of case studies.
Officials from FITI and the ACC said that after the training for the financial service providers like Banks and micro finances, they will work to modify the curriculum to involve NGOs and CSOs as well.
“We will be providing training programme, not only to the financial institutions but also to the agencies like civil servants, NGOs, and CSOs. The anti-corruption chairperson also indicated that we will not limit the training to financial institutions and that we will try and go beyond,” said Yeshey Lhamo, Programme Coordinator of FITI.
The training is scheduled to officially commence after two weeks.
Karma Samten Wangda
Edited by Phub Gyem
