The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Thursday signalled plans to release new guidelines on the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and Watch-listing very soon.
“A new BVN guideline should be coming out any moment from now. When the exposure draft is released, I will encourage you to make a suggestion regarding your area of concern,” Sam Okojere, director, payments system management department, CBN, told participants at Access Bank’s anti-fraud week in Lagos.
Represented by Ademola Adeleke, assistant director, payments system management, Okojere hinted of a stakeholders’ meeting coming soon where all the people in the ecosystem would come together to rub minds on how to improve the process.
Another thing in the offing of the CBN is the plan to come up with the risk-based supervision framework for Financial Technology Companies (FinTechs) and the Payment Service Banks (PSBs).
“The risk-based supervision framework that will actually take care of FinTechs and PSBs is in the offing, very soon there will be a very clear guideline on that,” Okojere said.
He noted the CBN has been embedding fraud risk-mitigating measures in its guidelines and periodic circulars to ensure that adequate measures are being implemented at all levels of digital product development and its operations.
In 2018, 38,000 fraud cases with over N9 billion attempted fraud value was recorded, while an estimated N2.0 billion was completely lost in the same year. This represents a 25.7 percent increase when compared to the N1.6 Billion lost in 2017. While we are not happy with the increase in the value of lost fraud, there are indicators that our controls are working”.
This is demonstrated by the fact that the percentage of actual losses compared to attempts, has reduced from 40.46 percent in 2017 to 23 percent in 2018. More succinctly, in 2017 the industry lost 40 kobo for every N1 attempted, while in 2018 the losses abated to 23 kobo on every N1 attempted.
Welcoming the participants, Herbert Wigwe, group managing director/CEO, said the Workshop was the Bank’s avenue of reaching out to members of our community on issues around fraud risk and cybersecurity through close engagement and collaboration of various stakeholders in the industry.
The workshop is in line with the International Fraud Awareness Week which officially started on Sunday, November 17, 2019.
Quoting from a report by Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), he said in 2018, about 89 percent of all financial services fraud in Nigeria happened through Digital channels while only 11 percent were non-electronic.
In Nigeria, he said, customers are culturally not attuned to security issues around digital transactions, noting that even well-educated people run the risk of falling victim to social engineering and identity theft traps.
“We must go beyond educating customers on the protection of crucial information to actual data protection and integrity amongst operators and stakeholders,” Wigwe said.
“I am a great believer in collaboration to solve problems. Our collaborative efforts in data protection and customer education are required in countering security threats in Digital payments,” he said further.
Speaking in his opening address, Ifeanyi Emefiele, head of anti-fraud at Access Bank Plc, said, “If we must achieve the cashless policy drive by CBN through the reduction in the use of cash for all forms of payments in Nigeria, digital payment systems must win the trust of merchants and end-users in the economy. Trust in this regard refers to the safety of digital payment systems”.
