CIBN Commences Tutorial Session for Agency Banking Certification Examination

Tutorial sessions for the students registered for the October 2024 diet examinations for Agency Banking Certification of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) have begun.

The first in the series of the tutorial session commenced on Saturday July 20, 2024 and will end on Sunday July 28, 2024.The dates for subsequent sessions being jointly organised by the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria and FIC Professionals Network Plc, will be announced later.

The organisers are being supported by the industry associations comprising of the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria (AMMBAN), Association of Mobile Money Operators of Nigeria (AMMON) and Association of Mobile Bank Operators (AMBO).

The sessions will focus on the four modules of the Foundation level of the Certification and avail the students the tips on how to prepare for and pass the examinations.

It would be recalled that CIBN unveiled the agency banking certification programme last year for Point of Sales (POS) agents, NIN /BVN agents, Agent network managers, customer service officers, agent banking personnel in the banks and Fintech companies.

One of the organisers, Mr. Segun Shonubi,  Executive Director, FIC Professionals Network Plc stated that the main purpose of the tutorial sessions was to help the students to better understand the course and enhance their performance in the examinations.

The examinations which have been scheduled for Tuesday, October 8, 2024 and Wednesday, October 9, 2024 will be conducted through Remote Online Proctoring to enable students write from the comforts of their homes or any place of their choices.

In addition, plans are being put in place for practice questions to be made available for the students on the Institute’s e-learning platform. This is to enable the students to practice and get acquainted with the format to aid their preparations.

Registration for the examinations is still open to interested students via www.myabc.ng till September16, 2024.

Mr Ken Opara, former President and Chairman of Council, CIBN, said the Agent banking certification program (ABC) was introduced to address capacity challenge in the ecosystem.

“Agent banking has been the key driver of financial inclusion, which creates financial access points and ultimately eradicating poverty.

“It is democratizing banking services, taking it to the grass root and connecting to the nooks and crane of the country.

“The certification programme, which details provides all round knowledge, practical engagement with industry experts and participation in standard procedures for conducting Agent banking business in Nigeria,” he said.

Fasasi Sarafadeen Atanda, member, CIBN sub-committee on Agent Banking Certification programme, said that Nigerians can now look forward to more knowledgeable and professional POS Agents, mobile money agents, bank customer service desk that knows what to do when you are debited by POS, more understanding from security agents that will see certified agents and treat cases from agent transaction professionally etc.

“It has been a lot of work from the ideation, to conception, to proposition, to adoption and to commission in the programme.

“There is a lot of complains about proliferation of unregistered agents in the ecosystem. What we are doing is banking because when you are doing cash -in cash- out, account opening among others. Most of these services require professionalism.

“The account opening that we pushed for, resulted to not palatable experience because greater per centage of accounts opened at agent location were used for fraud. This actually made some banks to stop account opening at agent location.

“Not every agent can handle Biometric Verification Number and National Identity Number, any agent that wants to handle these registrations must be certified by CIBN. We have seen that most of the error seen in the process are from agent location.

“They do sharp practices, unethical practices, not doing due-diligence due to poor training and lack of professionalism, if they had pass through this process of certification, they would have been trained on maintaining ethical standard,” he said.