Business Briefs
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THE Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, NDIC, is concerned over the high incidence of fraud and forgeries in the banking system. Umaru Ibrahim, managing director, NDIC, at the 2015 workshop organised by the corporation for financial journalists in Ilorin, on Wednesday, October 21, pointed out that Sections 35 and 36 of the NDIC Act 2006, mandate all deposit-taking financial institutions to send returns on frauds, forgeries and other financial malpractices to the corporation on a monthly basis. Banks are also expected to notify the corporation when staff are dismissed, those whose appointments were terminated or those advised to retire on grounds of financial infractions.
According to him, the NDIC in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria had embarked on various public awareness initiatives with a view to drastically reducing the percentage of Nigerians who have no access to any form of financial services from 39 to 20 percent by 2020.
He said: “The attention of the regulatory/supervisory authorities and operators has been drawn to this onerous task of focusing our attention to massive public awareness, hence the rationale behind bringing to the fore the issues of e-banking, capacity of micro, small and medium scale enterprise in the mobile payments system to this workshop.
The NDIC, as a leading deposit insurer, has been responding creditably well to emerging developments in the global financial system, particularly the pass-through insurance, financial literacy, consumer protection, financial inclusion, sustainable banking and extension of deposit insurance coverage to depositors of non-interest banking sector.”
Ibrahim listed challenges confronting e-banking, mobile payments and deposit insurance to include inadequate and poor infrastructure arising from lack of constant power supply, poor linkage access roads to remote locations and inadequate telecoms services in most locations and high overhead cost on the part of operators relying on alternative power source to ensure effective and efficient service delivery.
A total of 10,612 fraud cases in banks were reported in 2014, as against 3,786 cases in 2013, which showed an increase of 183 percent. The amount involved in 2013 was N21.80 billion as against N25.61 billion in 2014. The types and nature of frauds and forgeries were largely web-based, ATM card related, fraudulent transfer/withdrawal of deposits, among others.
— Nov 2, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT
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