How to protect your deposits during a bank merger, acquisition

Upon hearing that the bank you do all your monetary transactions with is being acquired by or merging with another bank, your first thought goes to your money. Of course that is understandable because your heart is always where your money is.

But there is no need to worry at all. Below are four simple ways to protect your deposits during such a situation.

There is really no need to panic about your deposits or investments with the bank, but you need to learn everything that you can about the merger or acquisition. Keep your ears to the ground about the bank where your deposits are and the one acquiring (or merging with) the bank.

2. Be on the lookout for changes

Irrespective of whether the bank is merging with another or being acquired by another bank, there will definitely be changes. Just concern yourself with changes that affect the kind of banking services you will be getting.

Keep sentiments aside and focus on what you stand to benefit as the customer. During these changes, some banks might do well by informing depositors, others let the changes creep up on them. If you are paying more for service charge as a result of the changes, and you are not comfortable with this, you can decide to switch to another bank that charges less with great services.

Or you can make enquiries first about other similar services that you can consider that will suit you before switching. In most cases, banks going through such changes tend to put forward interesting offers just to keep their customers’ interests and gain loyalty during such restructuring.

3. Leverage on the changes

While a merger or acquisition might seem like a good corporate move for the great banks, in a secret place in their heart (assuming banks have one), they are walking on eggshells because of the possibility of losing bigger accounts as a result of the changes.

These banks will definitely want to focus on keeping such long term accounts with very deep pockets for their own stability at all costs. So, if you have such “bank shaking” deposits you might want to consider leveraging on this by negotiating a better service deal with that will favor you.

4. Prepare yourself in order to avoid any painful surprise

Although all financial institutions in Nigeria are expected to be insured by NDIC (Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation), not all are. So be sure to verify if the bank in insured by NDIC.

Also, you need to take some precautionary measures to protect your deposits, irrespective of whether the bank is insured by NDIC or not. If you have authorised a third party software or app to make automatic direct debits from your account or your debit cards, now would be a good time to unauthorise it and manually do it until you are certain that the bank has settled well.