BVN: Over 5m microfinance banks’ customers risk account forfeiture

There is palpable apprehension amongst customers of microfinance banks, especially those who are yet to enroll for the compulsory Biometric Verification Number (BVN) following the expiration of the deadline penultimate Friday.

National Daily that an estimated five million accounts may be shut down on account of non-compliance with the BVN order in line with the mandate of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Speaking with a cross-section of customers who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the report, they told our correspondent that they were worried about the fate of their accounts since they couldn’t regularise their accounts as required by the apex bank.

It would be recalled that the CBN extended the BVN enrolment to December 31, 2017 instead of July 31, 2017 due to the various challenges encountered in the early stage of deployment of the joint CBN/NIBSS support to members of the National Association of Microfinance Banks, NAMB.

Director, Other Financial Institutions Supervision Department, Mrs. Tokunbo Martins, had announced the extension, saying that all customers without BVN linked to their account would no longer be entitled to debit operations effective from January 1, 2018.
Considering the fact that the commercial banks barred their customers from using accounts without BVN, a lot of customers with microfinance banks have had course to worry about the fate of their account if the BVN order is enforced.

However, Rogers Nwoke, Managing Director, Hasal Microfinance Bank, who confirmed that the deadline for microfinance banks’ customers have since elapsed, said there shouldn’t be any anxiety whatsoever.

“This is because the microfinance banks have since acquired BVN machines. The deadline has passed and the CBN hasn’t come out with any statement. But even if they go ahead and shut down operations on accounts that don’t have BVN, our expectation is that if a customer walks into a microfinance banks and wants to do transaction but cannot do it because he doesn’t have a BVN, he would be led to a BVN machine to do his enrolment. So once the enrolment is done, he is free to run his account. So there shouldn’t be any reason for any anxiety.”

Nwoke who is also the National President of the National Association of Microfinance Banks (NAMB) observed that the deadline for the commercial banks has been there for the past two-years or more, was quick to add that nobody lost money because they didn’t have BVN except those who deliberately choose not to enrol and put their BVNs or tie their BVN to their accounts.

On the possibility of extension of the deadline, he was rather noncommittal. “It’s not us but the CBN that fix deadline and the last time we spoke to them they said they weren’t extending it so that’s why we charge our banks to be ready to enroll people.”