NDIC pays N113bn to depositors of failed Banks, Others

Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) said it had paid over N113 billion to depositors of money in commercial banks, microfinance institutions as well as primary mortgage banks currently in liquidation as of September 30, 2021.

Hassan Bello, managing director and chief executive of the corporation, made this known at the just concluded Editors’ Forum held in Lagos, while assuring that the deposit insurance corporation was working to ensure that liquidated banks’ depositors are paid on time.

Bello revealed that the NDIC is in collaboration with the National Assembly to cause amendment to the NDIC Act in order to empower it to recover assets of banks in liquidation as quickly as possible.

According to him, the NDIC had paid a cumulative sum of N8.3billion to 443,946 insured depositors and N100.1billion to uninsured depositors of DMBs in-liquidation as of 30th September, 2021 while N3.4 billion was paid to 90,945 insured depositors of microfinance banks and N1.2 million to uninsured depositors.

He added that cumulative insured amount paid to 1,553 depositors of closed primary mortgage banks as at 30th September, 2021 stood at N110.2 million while N7.9 million was paid as uninsured deposits.

The NDIC boss, however, lamented that payments had been slow due to the several court cases as well as the unwillingness of debtors to pay up.

In his words: “It takes a long time in paying depositors because at the point of closure we only pay the maximum insured amount and subsequently we now begin to realise the assets and pay depositors.

“We have commenced the process of strengthening our failure resolution and liquidation mandate through the improvement of our internal processes and procedures as well as enhancing effective collaboration with relevant stakeholders to ensure that the Corporation discharges its responsibilities more efficiently.

“This has become imperative given the need to implement prompt corrective actions on failing or failed insured institutions, improve our processes in addressing challenges in liquidation and, most importantly, provide timely reimbursement of insured sums to depositors of failed banks.

“We have the challenge of slow recovery, as a lot of people that borrowed from those banks don’t want to pay back and we also have the issue of slow judicial process, and currently we are liaising with the National Assembly to get the act amended in order to empower the corporation to be able to recover these assets as quickly as possible.

“The loans given by the banks in liquidation are actually the deposit of people, so we need to recover them as quickly as possible so that we can pay them. We also have cases with banks in court so we want a situation whereby those cases are given accelerated hearing so that we can quickly dispense with them.”