Abuja – The Managing Director, Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Alhaji Umaru Ibrahim has called for the re-establishment of Nigeria Savings Bank to expand the frontiers of Nigeria’s banking system.
This is contained in a statement signed by the Head, Communication and Public Affairs, Mr Hadi Birchi and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.
Ibrahim made the call at a lecture for participants of Executive Course No. 38, at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies Kuru, Jos.
The title of the lecture was “NDIC and Engendering Confidence in the Financial Services Sector for Poverty Reduction and Economic empowerment”.
He said that the desire to effectively use post offices, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) would facilitate financial intermediation, mobilise savings, also give access to credits.
He drew the attention of the audience to Britain, which he said in the last decade, transformed its post offices into elegant avenues of harnessing savings and credits creation.
“Since we are talking of poverty alleviation, we can revisit the issue of National Savings Bank,” he said.
Ibrahim said that the CBN and Ministry of Communication had discussed the modalities for effective transformation of post offices so as to serve as banks’ agents.
He said that being a part of the financial safety net, NDIC was focusing on deposit guarantee and protection of depositors’ interest as a way of reducing poverty.
“As at December 2015, the Corporation’s insurance coverage was over 90 per cent of the 67 million depositors in Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) whose deposit liabilities amounted to N17.5 trillion.
“The sum of N165.5 billion belongs to 8.4 million depositors of microfinance banks and N73.71 billion belongs to 0.73 million depositors of primary mortgage banks were also covered by over 95 per cent.
Ibrahim said that the corporation was contemplating the introduction of e-deposit payment system toward facilitating depositor payout within the shortest possible time.
He reiterated that Deposit Insurance Scheme (DIS) was one of the critical components of Financial System Safety-Net arrangement and financial guarantee to depositors, particularly small depositors in the event of bank failure.
The NDIC boss said that any financial system that did not have a DIS could not be said to have a complete Financial Safety-Net arrangement. (NAN)
LCN/ GOM /GY
NDIC calls for re-establishment of National Savings Bank
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