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Banking sector biometric database ready by March 2014 – Sanusi

By BusinessNews Staff on October 1, 2013

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Lamido Sanusi, at the weekend in Lagos, said following a rigorous selection process for the provider, a biometric database for the nation’s banking industry will be ready by March next year.

Delivering the anniversary dinner of the Ikoyi Club 1938, Sanusi lamented the paucity of birth and death register in Nigeria, following which many people who die are unidentified, noting that as part of the database, “every bank customers will have his biometric data captured. It will be taken to microfinance banks, the pension funds, the insurance companies and others.”

Explaining further, he added that “if your wife comes with a marriage certificate, she has to put her finger and once it shows that she is the same person, nobody is going to ask her for another document.

“The biometric database is essential. We have been waiting for NIMC for a long time and I think NIMC is making some progress.

“The banking industry has moved on and I can assure you that by March next year, you will go and have your biometric records. It helps us to identify customers. If you commit a fraud in one bank, you can’t go to another bank because it will pick you up from the database. If you commit a fraud in a microfinance bank in a village, it will pick you up when you go to a bank.”

Also as part of its consumer protection efforts, the CBN, Sanusi continued, is coming out with a policy, where “if you go to your bank with an issue and the bank does not respond, if you write to us, we have an entire department that goes to check.

[Daily Independent]

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