CBN Set to Close Millions of Account in Banks, Other Financial Institutions Not Link to BVN

In order to clean up the banking sector and reduce fraud, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said it planned to close bank accounts without Bank Verification Number (BVN).

The BVN is a unique identifier that captures the biometric data of bank customers and is used to verify their identities and prevent fraudulent activities.

There are 24 commercial banks operating in Nigeria including Access, UBA, Zenith, and other financial institutions that require BVN.

The closure, the apex Bank stated, cut across all the commercial banks and other financial institutions that require the use of BVN.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced plans to close millions of bank accounts across various financial institutions that are not linked to a Bank Verification Number (BVN).

The CBN Director of Risk Management Department and Chief Risk Officer, Blaise Ijebor, disclosed the plan at the Prembly Compliance Breakfast Dialogue on Thursday April 6, saying the objective is to clean up the sector and reduce the growing incidence of fraud.

Speaking further, Ijebor noted that the apex bank has been working with the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to address the growing incidence of fraud in the sector, adding that the financial regulator was looking at commencing the exercise soon but did not give an indication of when the CBN would begin the clean up.

According to him, “Analysis of the NIBSS website indicated that there were only 57.01 million registered BVN numbers out of the total 191.4 million bank accounts in the country, with 133.5 million active.