The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has again called on banks and other financial institutions to ensure full compliance with the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) directive to submit customers’ account details to the Industry Customer Account Database (ICAD).
This reminder comes as part of efforts to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of customer data management within the financial sector.
In a recent statement, NIBSS emphasised the critical importance of adhering to the CBN’s directive, which was initially issued in a circular with reference number BKS/DIR/GEN/CIR/06/001.
The directive mandates all Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), microfinance banks, and other regulated financial entities to submit account details to NIBSS within 24 hours of generating a new account number. This submission can be completed through the ICAD API service or the ICAD portal.
The statement outlines specific requirements for different tiers of accounts. It stated that in Tier-1 accounts, all individual account records must be submitted with the bank verification number (BVN) and/or National Identification Number (NIN). As for Tier-2 and Tier-3 accounts, these accounts must also be submitted with BVN and NIN. For Accounts Lacking BVN or NIN; institutions are advised to initiate BVN enrolment for the customer or direct them to a NIN enrolment centre.
NIBSS has strictly prohibited the use of placeholder BVNs or NINs and warned against submitting fictitious data. Compliance with these directives is expected to improve the know your customer (KYC) process, ensure data accuracy, facilitate regulatory compliance, enhance fraud detection and prevention measures, and support more effective loan recovery processes through the global standing instruction (GSI) service.
In related news, several banks have recently reminded their customers to update their account information by linking their BVN and NIN, in response to the CBN’s directive.
