The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) recently emphasized the importance for banks and other financial institutions to submit their customers' account information to the Industry Customer Account Database (ICAD).

NIBSS made this known in an official statement entitled: “CBN’s directive: Submission of Customer

Account Details to ICAD”.

According to the directives issued by the apex bank in a circular numbered BKS/DIR/GEN/CIR/06/001 on January 2019, the reminder was sent to all commercial and microfinance banks, as well as other relevant entities.

NIBSS said: “Dear Partners,

The CBN released a circular with reference number BKS/DIR/GEN/CIR/06/001 on January 31 2019, directing all Deposit Money Banks, Microfinance Banks and Others to forward customers account details in specified format to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement (NIBSS), with a view to maintaining an Industry Customer Account Database (ICAD).

“The highlights below is to reiterate and remind all stakeholders of the expectations of the CBN circular.

“All regulated financial institutions are mandated to push all their customers’ accounts/wallets to NIBSS’ ICAD within 24 hours of generating and assigning an account number to the customer (new or existing).

“This can be done using the ICAD API service or the ICAD portal.

“All Tier-1 bank accounts and wallets records for individual accounts must be pushed to ICAD with Bank Verification Number, BVN and/or National Identification Number, NIN.

“All tiers two (2) and three (3) accounts and wallets for individual accounts must be pushed to ICAD with BVN and NIN.

“Where a potential customer does not have a BVN or NIN, the regulated financial institution may wish to;

“ For BVN, commence the process of enrolling the individual onto the BVN database.

“For NIN, advise the customer to visit the nearest NIN enrolment Centre.

The use of any placeholder BVN or NIN or fictitious data on an account is strictly prohibited.”

NIBSS highlighted the benefits of carrying out the CBN’s directives saying: “It

improves the industry Know Your Customer, KYC, process, industry data accuracy and integrity;

“ It improves regulatory compliance and monitoring, promotes industry fraud detection and prevention;

“It improves the Global Standing Instruction (GSI) service which supports loan recovery process.”