The Insurance Supervision Institute of Mozambique (ISSM) has just joined the Banking Supervision Application (BSA), an international system that aims to monitor the insurance market in order to better combat money laundering, terrorist financing and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Carla Louveira, Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance, who was speaking a few days ago in Maputo at an event to discuss banking supervision in Mozambique, said that the BSA will improve the functioning of the Mozambican insurance sector.

"Although the BSA was designed for banking supervision, its functions can be applied to the insurance market, offering several important advantages and benefits," said Louveira quoted by AIM.

Mozambique's accession to this platform is possibly one of the measures taken by the government to remove the country from the "gray list", after the Ministry of Economy and Finance presented its first assessment of the measures taken to get off the list to the FATF last March.

The system in question, said Louveira, improves advanced data analysis and enables real-time monitoring and secure information sharing. It also improves risk and crisis management and emergency response.

For her part, the President of the ISSM, Ester dos Santos, says that joining the BSA is extremely important as it improves communication and information sharing between the regulator and the supervised entities.

"It's a web-based system for monitoring and supervising banking institutions, but with applications in the insurance sector," he said.

It should be noted that the BSA came into being in 2003 as a collective initiative of ten central banks in Southern and Eastern Africa, with the aim of harmonizing the functions of regulatory bodies and guaranteeing the safety and soundness of their operations.