Bank Customers’ Data: CBN Should Extend Deadline
It is surprising that four days to the deadline imposed by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, for all bank customers in the country to update their information accounts or lose their bank accounts, the majority of Nigerians are still unaware of the directive.
The exercise, tagged Know Your Customer, KYC, began on 1 December 2010 and was scheduled to last only a month. By the end of last month, the CBN was compelled to extend the deadline as only an insignificant fraction of bank customers nationwide had complied with the directive.
The apex bank extended the deadline by a month. Know Your Customer would now end on 31 January 2011. But, by last week, customers’ response to compliance level, in a survey conducted by TheNews magazine across the country, revealed that millions of bank users were not even aware of the directive and only very few of them had complied.
Know Your Customer was designed by the CBN, in collaboration with the Economic and  Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and the United Nations Office in Drug and Crimes, UNODC, to combat money laundering and terrorism-financing activities, as stipulated by CBN’s Anti-Money Laundering/Combating of Financial Terrorism Regulation and the 2004 Money Laundering Act.
The Act empowers financial institutions to identify, verify their customers’ data and divulge the information to the appropriate authorities like CBN and EFCC if the need arises. Some banks sent out text messages early last December to inform their customers of the commencement of the exercise and the need for compliance.
But, since the directive was given, many banks did not bother to send text messages or electronic mails to their depositors alerting them on the need to comply. Many Lagos residents, including journalists, expressed surprise when they were asked if they had complied with the CBN directive.
CBN itself did not create enough public awareness and enlightenment on the directive. Some customers who received the message on their phones or their e-mails discountenanced it as a creation of fraudsters who desire detailed information from account owners with a view to using it to rip them off. Many customers simply  ignored the message.
The update form banks supply customers requires supply of personal and general  information like account identification, international passport, driver’s licence,  national identification card or any other form of identification,  business/occupation, employer’s data, tax identification number, state of origin and data relating to next of kin. To many depositors, many of them uneducated artisans and petty traders, these are one burdensome requirement too many.
Unfortunately, bank officials, pleading busy moments, are unwilling to assist customers fill the form. With all these hitches, many bank users may simply return to the old ways and dump banking by just keeping their money in the home. While we commend the CBN initiative, we believe that proper awareness and enlightenment were not carried out. For this reason, we call on the apex bank to extend the exercise by at least six months to ensure maximum compliance.
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