Achievements
Forming the Foreign Exchange & Remittance Group (FERG) was a vision of the Steering Committee comprising of ten leading exchange companies. They steadily worked to bring the exchange companies on a common platform. Even before the formal constitution of FERG, the Steering Committee resolutely took up issues affecting the industry with the assistance of various government and regulatory bodies, both within the UAE and internationally, and was successful into resolving them.
Some of the key achievements are:
- Policy Amendments with the Central Bank of the UAE.
- Emiratization: Created awareness and importance of bringing in the Emirati workforce into the private sector among the members. Active role played in the government’s policy of integrating UAE nationals into the private sector economy. Today, most exchange company members conform to the UAE national policy on emiratization.
- Partnering with the government in the implementation of the Wages Protection System (WPS).
- Close liaison with police departments and assisting them in investigations related to anomalies in financial transactions and suspicious activities.
- Sharing of information/fraud alerts amongst members to prevent frauds.
- Over 130 workshops conducted till date on various topics including AML/CTF (Basic & Advanced Counterfeit Currency & Prevention of Fraud, Risk Management, Ethics & Integrity etc which benefitted over 10,000 employees in the industry. These trainings have benefitted many smaller exchange companies which otherwise don’t have the resources and expertise to train their employees. This added more value to the majority of companies in this industry.
- Indian correspondents’ bank guarantee requirements reduced from 3 days to 1 day.