Additional Adjustments to Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directives for Dealing with the Coronavirus (Temporary Provision)

Bank of Israel
Banking Supervision Department
Policy and Regulation Division
September 22, 2020
Circular no. C-06-2626
Attn:
Banking corporations and credit card companies Re: Additional Adjustments to Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directives for Dealing with the Coronavirus (Temporary Provision) (Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive no. 250) Introduction

1. Against the background of the Israeli government’s decision to take various actions to halt the
   increase in morbidity, including reducing activity and increasing the severity of limitations on movement in the public sphere, and in order to allow continuity in providing banking services to the public, while maintaining the health of the public and of bank employees, following are adjustmets that we formulated in the temporary provision, in view of the above.
2. After consultation with the Advisory Committee on Banking Business Affairs, and with the
   consent of the Governor, I have established the following Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive as detailed below. Main revisions to the Temporary Provision Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive no. 355 on “Business Continuity Management” (Section 13)
3. Section 13 of Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive no. 355, shall be followed by
   Section 13(a) on “Opening branches in a period of real concern of an adverse impact to the health
   of the public”.
   Explanatory remarks
   In view of the government’s decision to decrease activity and movement in the public sphere, banks are permitted to operate via a reduced format while taking close care of the terms detailed in the Directive, which are intended to reduce as much as possible, under the circumstances, the adverse impact on banking services to the public. Regarding Section 13a(b)(5), it is noted that although customers’ communications that their branch is not an in-person branch is not necessarily included in the types of conversations for which a professional human response within 6 minutes through the call center is required, as established in

Section 5a3 of the Banking (Service to Customer) Law, 5741-1981, the banking corporations are to
make maximum efforts to provide them with a response within a reasonable amount of time. Application
4. The start date of the amendments to this Directive shall be September 22, 2020.
Update of file
5. Update pages for the Proper Conduct of Banking Business Directive file are attached. Following
are the provisions of the update:
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(Sept. 16, 2020) [9] 250-1-8 (Sept. 22, 2020) [10] 250-1-8 Respectfully, Yair Avidan Supervisor of Banks