Remita’s limitations: NDIC adopts NIBSS to pay insured depositors of Heritage Bank
The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has adopted the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to pay insured depositors of the now-defunct Heritage Bank, citing limitations in the Remita payment platform.
NDIC’s Deputy Director at the Enugu Zonal Office, Pamela Roberts, disclosed this during a workshop for business editors and members of the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN), held in Lagos.
Roberts explained that while the NDIC had relied on Remita for payments since 2013, the platform presented challenges, particularly in handling large-scale payouts.
She said: “The Corporation had used Remita to effect payments from 2013 which had a few limitations in terms of uploading of payments, validity of account name and number etc. During the insured payments of Heritage Bank, the Corporation explored the option of using the NIBSS payment platform to facilitate larger number of payments at one time.”
The NDIC’s Deputy Director further noted that Remita’s stringent verification process, where the entire batch of payments could be rejected if there was a mismatch between an account name and the corresponding record, led to delays in payouts, requiring manual intervention.
Despite the transition to NIBSS, the NDIC encountered some other challenges related to the Bank Verification Number (BVN) system.
Roberts pointed out that not all depositors were captured in the NIBSS data, which limited the automatic payments.
She said: “It was observed that the data dumps that were received from NIBSS did not capture all BVN account holders in the bank. Thus, limiting the number of depositors that could be paid automatically.
“The data dump of all account holders in the defunct bank that were tied to a BVN, for providing alternate accounts for payment of the depositor’s insured sum revealed that many depositors had accounts solely with the failed bank.
“The subsequent need for physical verification of depositors, to collect their information and alternate accounts for payments led to large depositor turnout, at the Head Office and Zonal Offices which was tumultuous.”
She also mentioned that some payments were delayed due to legal restrictions such as Post-No-Debit (PND) status on certain accounts, resulting from court rulings or liens.
