CBN orders banks to publish names of debtors

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has issued an August 1, 2015 deadline for banks operating in the country to publish names of their debtors.

This was disclosed on Thursday by Tokunbo Martins, CBN’s director of banking supervision, who was briefing journalists on the outcome of the 322 bankers committee meeting in Abuja.

“You will recall that at the last bankers committee meeting, we discussed about publishing the names of serial debtors of banks. We discussed this again because of the fact that the date is drawing close,” she said.

“Last time we had the meeting, we said that there should be three months of grace to give the debtors the opportunity to put the facilities back to performing status. So, by the 1st of August, any debtor that hasn’t done so, the name will be published by the bank.

“So, the banks are encouraged to speak to their customers that fall into that category that they should put in more effort to pay off.”

Martins revealed that the total credit currently in the system was between N13 and N14 trillion and about three per cent of it was non-performing. She added that banks had an upper limit target of five per cent.

On the electronic banking space, Phillip Oduzua, chief executive officer, United Bank for Africa (UBA), said that 12.5 million customers had been enrolled on the Bank Verification Number (BVN) exercise.

“We believe that this is a substantial mileage that we have made and there is still room to close the gap knowing that the deadline for everybody to enroll is June 30th. In the event that any customer is not enrolled, it is possible that the customer may not be able to enjoy a lot of the banking services,” he said.

“As such, we will urge all customers of banks to enroll so that they would continue to enjoy unhindered services from the banks.”

He said customers who fail to enroll may be barred from enjoying credit facilities, foreign exchange services and internet banking, among others.

On the cashless policy of the CBN, Oduzua disclosed that the policy would be extended to every part of the country before the end of third quarter due to the progress of the policy so far.

Henry Semenitari, chief executive officerof Unity Bank, said the committee also reviewed the enhancement witnessed in the credit culture in the sector. He said that the culture would now be extended to other financial institutions of Insurance and non-banking institutions within the banking space.

“As the culture continues to improve, the requisite data that will lead to uninformed judgement in terms of given credit to businessmen will become easier and control effective,” he said.

“So, what we will require or implore people to do is to provide the necessary Know-Your-Customer (KYC) to their banks to ensure they are registered through the credit registry as well as other banking and non-banking financial institutions.”

Semenitari added that this would be in consonance with financial inclusion policy and help to stabilise and institute a sound culture of credit that would be relevant to the economy.