2020 is your year of consumer protection, CBN tells account owners’
Just as the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in 2018 declared that the year is the year of telecoms consumer protection, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Monday assured millions of Nigerian bank account owners that 2020 will their year in terms of consumer protection from all sorts of sharp practices by commercial banks’.
Speaking on a live Channels TV programme, Business Morning yesterday, the Director, Consumer Protection at CBN, Mr Musa Jimoh made it clear that from 2020, issues of consumer complaints and concerns will be uppermost in both commercial banks and the apex bank in terms of timely resolution.
“And again the major one is the introduction of the Consumer Protection Regulation. In the implementation of the consumer protection framework that came out in 2016. So what we have done now is to ensure that banks put in place, communication channels through which consumers can reach them.
“We are also mandated that in fraud related transactions, it will be a 24hour thing by banks, and our expectation is that the contact centres of banks will cease to be just contact centres that will just receive complaint and sit down there. For fraud related transaction, it should be reported immediately to those who can act.
He made it clear that “You don’t expect that a fraud occurs mid-night Friday and people have to wait till Monday morning before anything is done, no. Under the complaint handling and redress chapter of the consumer protection regulation that all these would come to pass.” He said in times of complains, “it is not our expectation that victimised consumers should come first to Central Bank, no, we are not retail bankers we are regulators.”
“So the first step is the banks themselves and we are expecting banks to come up with plans to show that they are ready to implement consumer protection processes within their own system.
“And this must be approved by their board and when a board sanctions the process, we expect that it is the highest governance level of a bank and the officers should comply with them. So, we can tell consumers out there like never before, 2020 is your year, and your banks will take care of you.
“They are mandated to by the new regulation which we will be talking about some other time, that the days of your being treated wrongly are over and you can now be almost at the same level with your banks.
“It may sound sweet to say but Central Bank is ready to implement this and banks are also ready. Viewers should also know that these regulations do not just come from the skies, all the stakeholders, consumer advocacy groups, all there are NGOs who take care of consumers, and they also have inputs in these regulations, so let that be known,” the Director Consumer Protection at the apex bank averred.
