‘Tisa’s bid pending approval’

Business

By DALE LUMA
TEACHERS Savings and Loans Society’s (Tisa) application for a banking licence is still pending approval, says Bank of PNG (BPNG) Governor Loi Bakani.
Bakani confirmed with The National yesterday that the application submitted last Nov 5, was still going through the approval process.
With a balance sheet of more than K986 million at the end of 2020, Tisa is looking at entering the banking space.
Tisa chief executive officer Michael Koisen said the society wanted to enter the banking sector to provide relief for its members.
Koisen previously said there was a duopoly in the retail banking sector which was not good for the market.
“There are two major banks servicing the retail sector, we have four banks in the country and their focus, a lot of it, is on the corporate sector,” Koisen said.
“But the retail sector needs someone else to come in.
“With a balance sheet of K986 million and 63,000 members, Tisa has the size to upgrade to a bank, and the board and management felt that the time was right to migrate to banking.”
BPNG assistant governor Ellison Pidik previously explained that meeting the requirements for a successful application would be challenging. “Applying for a banking licence is difficult because commercial banking means that you will be able to do transactions domestically and also overseas between PNG and other countries,” he said.
“So that means that there needs to be a relationship with other banks overseas to be able to facilitate transactions across the board between PNG and internationally, so called correspondence banking.
“We receive the application and there is some discussion between the bank and Tisa on the priority areas.”
Pidik said one priority area was to identify and working on establishing relationships with corresponding banks overseas.
“These are international banks, multinational banks, vast banks across the globe, from large countries like the US, Australia, Japan Singapore and UK, and in Europe.
“That is a very important requirement to be able to move towards complying with that requirement to get the licence.”