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| Participants at the Conference. |
The Managing Director of one of Nigeria’s most vibrant
banks, Heritage Bank, Ifie Sekibo, has stressed the need for the Federal Government
to work towards creating a credible and strong identity management towards
expanding access to credit facilities in the country.
Bank Verification Number (BVN), according to Sekibo
has been able to create a form of identification in the country, but has not
been able to address some of the issues around identity management in the
country.
Represented by the Divisional Head, Strategy &
Business Solution of the bank, Segun Akanji, Sekibo asserted while speaking at
the 2019 Annual Conference of Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria
(FICAN) at the weekend, noting that the ability of individuals to relocate from
one place to another without notifying anyone was a major issue in access to
credit and the dearth of effective and standard identity management
infrastructure made access to credit for the SMEs in Nigeria tough as banks
only see unmitigated risks.
According to him, “I am talking about identity
management challenge. That is the biggest collateral to lending and that is
what is missing in this economy. The day banks can verify where you live,
everybody will get loan with ease, because you cannot run away”.
“People take a loan from banks and change
accommodation, run away to Ibadan and you cannot find them. That must change.
But how do you do that? It is very simple. You lose all the benefits that is
allocated to you as a person, the day you relocate like that, you are as good
as dead.
“Like when you live abroad, once you misbehave with
your identity, you cannot bank, your credit goes bad, you cannot go to hospital
and everything else goes bad and you cannot do anything. So, you have a
responsibility to yourself and the country that supports you to report yourself”.
“There is no value in our identity management as we
have it. So, it is not just about banks, it is about the holistic structure
where there is no value to the person that each of us will represent. ”He gave
instances about developed economies such as the US where if one changes
accommodation, they must notify all relevant institutions that they deal with
because of the inherent value in the system”.
“Just like they do abroad, when you are changing
accommodation, you will be the one going to your bank, hospital, everywhere,
you will dedicate a day in a week until you go around to everyone and inform
them of the address change, and why is that?, because they place value on where
you live. That’s where your mail, pension, cheque comes. Everything attached to
you comes to that address. So, there is value. We need to get to that and then
no one will be needing collateral to get some minimum amount to do business.”
Sekibo also observed that although the banks had
pushed the government to some form of identity management system through the
bank verification number, BVN, it has not been enough to solve the problem of
the identity constraining lending in the country and you can argue that the
banks have driven the government to some identity management system through the
BVN, but the problem is that the infrastructure that will keep everybody in the
homes where they live and not just change is non-existent,” he concluded.
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