THROUGH all the stages where I worked as a branch manager or as a manager of the bank as a whole, I used to rely heavily on the internal control aspects in the bank to check on the proper work course and its accuracy, quality and adherence to the principles, fundamentals, rules, regulations and implementation according to the set and approved working procedures. The internal control tools are included in the internal audit and inspection, then comes the role of the external auditor and the inspection, which may be provided from outside the bank, such as the bank's headquarters' inspection, the Central Bank's inspection and the inspection of the relevant authorities, such as taxes and insurance… etc. To be able to rely on a specific reference to judge the performance in terms of being in conformity with, or violating, the regulations, those regulations must, first of all, be identified, codified and updated by the modifications applied to them, as well as documenting them, in a way which makes them easy to refer to, put them in manuals and make sure that all the employees are informed about them. When I was the general manager of the bank, my most significant concern was to set the work's regulations and procedures in a modern manner. I thought that moving forward with a plan to increase the number of the bank branches without a concomitant setting of the work regulations and procedures in a modern scientific manner was like someone whose body grows, but his brain does not. I have immediately assigned a competent company, which is a branch of a foreign company, to study, through its team, the work method of the bank's regional management, all the branches and departments, all the activities, services and products provided by the bank to its clients, the legal entity of the bank as a regional management for commercial branches which affiliate the bank's headquarters in another country that runs specialised branches in this country. I used to meet with the work team of this company at the end of each day's work to see what they had done on the same day and what they will do on the next day. The great effort and the hard work, which took about six months, resulted in producing a manual on the work procedures for each of the bank activities, which the work team of this specialised company had recorded, and I had formulated after making several amendments on them. These procedures were placed in elegant manuals which were well indexed, and were distributed to all the relevant branches and departments attached to a letter which was addressed to those branches and departments, considering what those manuals contain as a work constitution to be implemented pursuant to the items contained in it without any amendment. I had also sent them to the Inspection and Internal Audit Administration being considered as the reference on which basis the performance of the branch is measured according to what had been stated in them. The external auditor had also considered them as a reference for him when auditing before the end of each year. Those manuals that contained the work procedures as well as the bank's credit policy and financial policy, were considered the basis of performance evaluation according to the branches adherence or non-adherence to what has been stated in them. Those procedures, as well as the credit policy and financial policy, were subject to modifications whenever necessary provided that these modifications be added and concerned branches and departments be informed about them. The existence of work procedures helped standardise the implementations of work procedures in all branches. It also helped in standardising the forms and records (manual or electronic), as well as the stamps that are placed on the transactions which require a stamp. I have reached a high degree of assurance by setting the work procedures, the credit policy and the financial policy for the bank. This assurance was almost complete by documenting those procedures and policies, as well as making sure that they were distributed to the competent parties and read and captured by them. The maximum degree of assurance is derived by full adherence with those procedures and policies to reach the maximum degree of the internal control of the bank's business.
From a bank manager's diary (LXII) [email protected]. Mahdi is a veteran Egyptian banking
