According to sources, Arthur Andersen made the final presentation before IBA chairman and AT Pannir Selvam and sercretary and CEO MN Dandekar at the Union Bank headquarters on Tuesday. "The final draft has been okayed and the IBA management committee will formally clear it in the last week of December. The new avatar of the association will be visible over the next few weeks," sources said.

The consultancy firm was extremely critical of the IBA administration in its draft report. It had suggested overhauling of the structure of the organisation to bring in efficiency and alertness about the changing times.

The new focus is on networking with the environment. "So long IBA was working in isolation. Now the objective is to emerge as a representative body for the banking industry," sources said. It has already started interacting with different industries and looking into various aspects of financing software companies, film industry, construction companies and marine units.

It has also started working in close cooperation with other industrial bodies like Ficci and CII.

Apart from the change in policy and approach, the consultancy firm has also mooted the idea of an organisational restructuring which envisages more powers for the CEO of the association which will ensure faster decision-making process. At the current set-up, the IBA management committee -- which meets once a month -- takes all decisions.

The change in the profile of the organisation, which has the represention of virtually the entire banking industry, is significant in the context of Reserve Bank of India Bimal Jalan's statement that IBA should evolve itself into a self-regulatory body (SRO). Jalan had made the statement at the global banking conference held in New Delhi in September.

Barring Bank of Madura and a few new-generation private sector banks, all banks operating in India are members of the association. However, despite such a wide representation, since its inception the IBA has primarily been working as a body for wage negotiations with trade unions. At the initial stages of financial sector liberalisation, the bankers' body also served as a platform for formulating uniform lending and deposit rates even as the RBI was deregulating the financial sector.

With competition hotting up, the "cartelisation" has become a thing of the past and IBA is increasingly losing its influence over the industry. The restruction process aims at strengthening the organisational set-up of the bankers' body and making its presence relevant in the fast-changing financial sector.