The Central Bank of Nigeria has said anyone who tries to change the name on a bank account so as to link it with the Bank Verification Number (BVN) of another account should be reported as a suspicious activity.
Many bank customers who had various accounts with various banks under different names had not been able to link their accounts or access funds and had resorted to changing of names so as to link all their accounts to their BVN.
The volume of change of name and confirmation of names in national newspapers had soared by over 50 per cent after the deadline for the registration of the BVN in October last year.
Speaking in Lagos yesterday at a CBN/International Finance Corporation (IFC) organised media workshop CBN deputy director, Banking Supervision, Steve Nwadiuko, explained that “when someone bears John in a bank and had obtained BVN using that name and he has another account where he bears Joseph when he wants to link the accounts, a suspicious activity has already occurred.
“That bank is supposed to raise a suspicious activity report to the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU). He has some explanation to do because of the mere fact that he bears various names with various accounts. The bank also has to notify the bank where they adopted the BVN from so that the bank that gave the BVN also issues a suspicious activity report and the account is closed until the issues are cleared.”
Consequently, he said the CBN will be issuing a circular soon. “For the people doing change of name, the CBN is working on that. It is going to issue a circular on what banks should do because that is the essence of the BVN and we are happy with what is going on.”
The BVN was launched in 2014 as a means to curb fraud, identity theft and engender loan growth by issuing bank customers with unique identification numbers.
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