The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will be coming up with cyber security crisis management framework in the first quarter of next year.
Aisha Ahmad, deputy governor, in charge of financial system stability disclosed this at the ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF)/Wold Bank annual meetings in Washington, D.C.
Also, speaking on the next level for cyber security exercises, she said, “the next action we are going to be taking in first quarter of next year is coming up with cyber security summit, where we bring all the participants together”.
Ahmad shared the experience from Sub-Saharan Africa following the exercises undertaken by the IMF in six Sub-Saharan African countries and this has helped to strengthen cyber resilience and identify priorities for improvement.
“Cybersecurity is not an IT issue, it is not an issue for chief information officers. It is a business risk issue and a regulatory risk issue. And because it has the potential to disrupt IT operations and financial sectors and its ability to disrupt the mandate that we have as for financial stability, it is important that central banks focus on resilience,” she said.
Aisha noted that the CBN alarmed had some guidelines and frameworks in place, and that it’s about strengthening them and identifying where there is need to improve layout regulations so that they are fit for purpose.
She a acknowledged the way fintechs are disrupting the Nigerian financial space, saying a lot of it has come from the payment space.
“So you see them more active in the space for receipts where they are already getting licenses from us. We’ve seen disruptions in the savings space and disruptions in the micro-lending space so these are not organisations that the CBN is not aware of but broadly speaking, our continuum shall be to identify these organisations and that is why we are trying to finalise the incubation of some of these companies”.
In line with its objective of enhancing financial inclusion and the development of the payment system by increasing access to deposit products and payments services through a secured technology-driven environment, the CBN recently issued Approvals-in-Principle (AIP) to three Payment Service Banks (PSBs).
Continuing, Ahmad said the Apex bank is looking at moving from regulation by identification to more around regulating their activity.
“So if you are not a bank, you cannot get a banking license but if you operate as a bank then we have to regulate. We are looking a lot at ensuring professionalism as well in what we do in terms of regulation.
We don’t want to stifle innovation so we want more companies to come up and assist because Fintechs do a lot for furthering financial inclusion objective. The Central Bank is working very hard in that respect and we are open to all organisations that are willing to come on board”.
Hope Moses-Ashike & Onyinye Nwachukwu in Washington, D.C.
