In line with its commitment to protect bank customers, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) at the weekend said it would soon introduce a policy aimed at enforcing the repayment of illegal deductions on customers’ account by banks.

Specifically, the CBN Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who revealed this at a forum in Lagos, explained that in the event that the central bank discovers that a bank had cheated its customer and failed to refund the customer, the anticipated guideline would empower the regulator to debit the bank directly and refund the money to the customer.

Sanusi put the total amount of excessive charges recovered by its consumer protection department for bank customers since its creation at N6 billion. He added: “There is a framework we are coming out with soon. If you go to your bank with an issue and the bank does not respond, if you write to us, we have an entire department that goes to check.

“We have just issued guidelines and regulations that will actually allow us, in the event that we discover that your bank has cheated you and if we ask the bank to pay and the bank don’t pay you, to debit the bank directly and refund you your money.”

He also declared that the central bank has been engaging bank Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) on the issue of consumer protection.

“I can assure you that to the best of my knowledge the bank CEOs have understood the importance of consumer protection. This is because consumer protection and financial literacy are critical to financial inclusion.

“If you want people to participate in the financial system, they have to trust the system and they have to be able to know that if there is problem, there is somewhere they will go and they will get redress.”
Speaking on plans to introduce the biometrics database for customers’ identification, the central bank governor declared that “the database will be up by the first quarter of 2014.”

“In the last six months, we have had a very rigorous process of selecting someone that is going to set up a biometric database for the entire banking industry. This database will be up by the first quarter of 2014. Every bank customers will have his biometric data captured. It will be taken to microfinance banks, the pension funds, the insurance companies and others.

“If your wife comes with a marriage certificate, she has to put her finger and once it shows that she is the same person, nobody is going to ask her for another document,” Sanusi said further.
He described the proposed system as essential, saying that the central bank had been waiting for the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

“The banking industry has moved on and I can assure you that by March next year, you will go and have your biometric records. It helps us to identify customers. If you commit fraud in one bank, you can’t go to another bank because it will pick you up from the database.

“If you commit fraud in a microfinance bank in a village, it will pick you up when you go to a bank. So, that is what you are going to have in 2014,” he declared.

Source: Thisday (by Obinna Chima)