By Chinwendu Obienyi
Amidst challenges in Nigeria’s macroeconomic environment, the number of bank account owners with Bank Verification Number (BVN) rose to 57 million as at April 9, 2023.
This is according to data obtained from the latest BVN registration data released by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).
Bank Verification Number is a unique number that allows individual accounts to be verified across the Nigerian banking industry.
The unique ID number is issued to every bank customer at enrolment and linked to all accounts associated with the customer in all Nigerian banks.
NIBSS had stated that BVN database stood at 56.5 million at the end of 2022, but the latest data showed that banks have since recorded about 500,000 new BVN registrations in the first quarter (Q1) and 9 days in April 2023.
This is far lower than the average of 400,000 registrations per month recorded last year. This also means that BVN registrations has slowed down since the beginning of this year with challenges that came with the naira redesign, despite recent moves by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to close all bank accounts not linked with the number.
According to NIBSS, active bank accounts in the country stood at 133.5 million as of December 2021. While data for 2022 is yet to be released, analysts at Nairametrics believes that the figure is expected to be higher than that of the preceding year, which shows that there is still a wide gap between the registered BVN and the number of bank accounts.
They have also argued that the difference may not be much because multiple accounts can be linked to a single BVN.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, had recently revealed plans to close millions of bank accounts that are not linked to BVN across several Deposit Money Banks (DMBs).
Emefiele, in a statement signed by the Director of the Risk Management Department and Chief Risk Officer, Blaise Ijabor, said the objective was to clean up the sector and reduce the increasing incidence of fraud in the financial sector.
As part of their efforts to combat this problem, he noted that the apex bank has been working with the NIBSS to address the growing incidence of fraud in the sector. According to him, the objective of this initiative is to clean up the financial sector and reduce the growing incidence of fraud. He further explained that the CBN has observed that many bank accounts are not linked to the BVN, making it difficult to track fraudulent activities.
The CBN’s decision to close millions of bank accounts that are not linked to the BVN is expected to encourage customers to update their records and link their bank accounts to the BVN.
The CBN has also assured customers that the process will be conducted in a transparent and fair manner, adding that the public has been urged to cooperate with the CBN to ensure the success of this initiative in creating a more secure financial sector for everyone.
To facilitate BVN registrations, the apex bank in 2015, named twelve approved centres across Europe, North America, Asia, Middle East and Africa to facilitate the BVN registration exercise for Nigerian banks’ customers in the Diaspora.
The approved centres include the ones in Washington DC, Atlanta, New York and Houston, United States of America; Johannesburg, South Africa; Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, China; New Delhi, India; London and Leicester, United Kingdom; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.