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Depositor protection is one of the main pillars of bank regulation and supervision. The main justification for depositors protection includes:First, depositors have less opportunity to monitor the sophisticated banks. Second, banks engagement in risky investments and owner‟s limited liability would make them vulnerable to various risks, insider abuse and embezzelemnt that would affects depositors. Third, to avoid possible bank run and contagion by ensuring depositors confidence on banks. As a result, there are various schemes introduced at national and international levels to protect bank depositors‟ which include: capital, legal reserve, liquidity, lender of last resort, banks self-regulation and supervision, reporting and disclosure, and depositor priority in asset distribution. Though there are various schemes helpful to protect bank depositors‟ in Ethiopia as well, whether it is adequate or not is an issue; therefore, the study particularly has analyzed the bank depositors‟ protection in Ethiopia from the legal and institutional framework perspective. To accomplish this, the researcher adopted the qualitative legal research method. Hence, different laws including the banking laws and NBE directives as well as literatures and online resources were consulted. The researcher also interviewed senior experts at NBE, TCCPA, HPR members, university law professors and selected commercial banks. The major finding of the research includes the legal requirement for capital and liquidity of banks are less protective when compared to the latest Basel standards. The culture of public disclosure of material information by banks is practically low. NBE did not issue directives to clearly determine the conditions of its loan to banks as a lender of last resort, and to set external bank dispute resolution mechanisms, like a financial ombudsman or mediation. TCCPA was not an effective body to redress bank depositors‟ disputes and to elevate their awareness. The internal control arrangement of banks was fairly good, and the NBE was performing its regulatory and supervisory function well though some deficiencies still exists. Lastly, there were few recent developments in Ethiopia such as NBE‟s explicit mandate to regulate financial consumers protection, NBE establish separate unit to monitor financial institutions compliance with the consumer prtecion obligation and consider financial literacy as one of the finacial incusion strategy that would positively affect bank depositors‟ protection in the future. The study concludes the legal and institutional framework for bank depositors‟ protection in Ethiopia is still insufficient. Finaly, the researcher recommends the NBE to maximize its enforcement action, issue directives, and finally areas for future study. |
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