Unity Bank gets PCI DSS recertification as Q1 PBT up 26%

Unity Bank plc has recorded a 26 percent profit before tax in its Q1 2014, financial statement compared with the same period in 2013. This is at the top of a list of positive trends disclosed by the bank in its unaudited financial report of the quarter ended March 31, 2014, which was recently submitted to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).

Gross earnings and total operating income also appreciated during the period, while operating expenses fell by about 8.5 percent, indicating more effective cost management. Earnings per share increased from 6.08 kobo to 6.95 kobo.

In a related development, the bank has successfully completed the mandatory annual re-certification of its Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards Certification (PCIDSS), and has received its Report on Compliance (RoC) from the external Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), NetHost Legislation Ltd.

The PCI is a security standard for organisations that handle information about credit and debit card holders to reduce card-related fraud. With this development, Unity Bank customers can carry out their card-enabled transactions with confidence that all necessary security measures are in place to protect their data.

This is in line with the directive from the Central Bank of Nigeria that all banks must achieve certification to the PCI standards, Unity Bank had successfully attained its certification on April 5, ahead of almost three-quarter of the banks in the country and is among the first to complete its annual recertification.

The bank has also disclosed that to ensure that it continues to maintain its high security standards for the protection of card-holder data and card production environments, it is putting resources in place to train its own team of Internal Security Assessors (ISAs) to lead future recertification exercises and work with external Qualified Security Assessors (QSAs) to obtain RoC.

The CBN had recently extended its earlier issued deadline of December 2012, to November 2014, to enable other banks that had not attained the certification to complete the process.