The Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) has urged all bank customers to ensure they were verified to check fraudulent acts in banks.
This is contained in statement credited by Mr Ade Shonubi, Managing Director of NIBSS in Lagos, on Friday.
The statement reiterated that the Bank Verification Number (BVN) initiative would help to boost retail credit in the banking industry, identify and blacklist fraudulent customers.
It explained that once banks were able to identify and blacklist fraudulent customers, banks would be encouraged to extend loans to customers who were credit worthy.
According to the statement, there is the need to check the increasing rate of delinquent borrowers.
NIBSS is responsible for the implementation of the BVN in the country.
The BVN is aimed at protecting bank customers and to further strengthen the Nigerian banking system.
Although the registration is ongoing in banks, the initiative will be implemented in June.
The statement noted that apart from the challenge of identifying customers, another hindrance to retail credit was the deliberate efforts of some Nigerians who evade loan repayment.
It pointed out that the BVN would address that problems by helping to identify and distinguish fraudulent Nigerians from law-abiding and honest citizens.
the statement said: “‘When the BVN project came up, the three key things were to identify customers, identify them uniquely across banks and across accounts.
“So, once you have BVN, even if you have 10 bank accounts, it is the same BVN that will be tied to the bank accounts, thereby, blacklisting people committed to financial infractions.
“Fraudsters forge documents. What happens today is that a guy goes to a bank, commits fraud; runs to another bank because there is no way of tying all the activities across.
“So, we found out that there were quite a lot of losses related to these individuals from one bank to another,” it said.
The statement quoted the NIBSS boss as saying that the BVN would allow lenders to begin to build retail credit.
It explained that this was why the entire retail consumer lending were people with formal employment.
“That is why you see everybody (lenders) running to the oil companies to say ‘let’s give your staff car loan; let’s give your staff consumer loan; let’s give your staff TV loans.
“But there are a lot of self-employed people working in smaller organisations, who should also benefit.
“Nobody wants to take the risk on them because if they resign today and run off, how are you going to get your money?
“Once they have bank accounts, the BVN allows us to identify them.” (NAN)

Outgoing Chairman of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Jos district society, Rev. Christian Okoye (left) congratulating his successor, Mr Gyang Pam, during the institute’s annual general meeting in Jos, recently