Central Bank Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele on Thursday disclosed that 1.4 billion electronic transactions valued at N97.4 trillion were processed in the banking industry in 2017, as against 869 million transactions valued at N69.1 trillion recorded the previous year.
Represented by the Deputy Governor, Financial Systems Stability of CBN, Emefiele disclosed this while declaring open the maiden National Financial Literacy Stakeholders’ Conference in Abuja.
He said while these developments were good for the financial system expected to aid the financial inclusion efforts, “they are accompanied by a myriad of challenges”.
According to the Governor, some of the challenges include, privacy and security concerns, requiring enhanced privacy and data protection for consumers, exposure to new and more inventive fraudulent practices which requires stakeholders to double their combat efforts
He said, “Consumers are confronted with multiplicity of information which may lead to information processing errors. As such, concerns around accuracy, reliability of information as well as transparency continue to grow.
“The industry is also faced with an increasing complexity of financial products and services accompanied by consumers lack of information or capacity to understand such products and/ or their associated risks. Thus enhanced disclosure has therefore before very essential”, he added.
The CBN Governor noted that the theme of the conference ‘Implementing Financial Literacy and Consumer Protection to Advance Financial Inclusion in Nigeria’ couldnt be more unambiguous in its focus and in its urgency to move from the conceptual to the practical in drive for financial inclusion.
He said building inclusive financial systems has become an important objective for policymakers around the world given the positive effects that financial inclusion has on poverty reduction and enhancing economic prosperity.
In 2012, Nigeria launched a National Financial Inclusion Strategy and adopted a target to achieve 80% inclusion rate by 2020. The latest Access to Financial Services Survey by EFInA indicates that about 36.8% of eligible Nigerian adults do not have access to Financial Services. This is down from 41.6% recorded in 2016.
The Governor recognized the efforts of some financial inclusion stakeholders who excelled in their financial inclusion drive in 2018, adding that the progress they made “thus far has been as a result of very hard work and concerted effort by multiple stakeholders across policy, industry, agencies etc”.
According to him, deposit Money Banks such as Jaiz, Unity, Union and the State govts – Yobe, Katsina, Nassarawa are recognized for significant growth in BVN registration while Ecobank, First Bank & Access Bank recorded the largest number of customers and volume of bank-led agent transactions.
In 2012, President Buhari launched the National Financial Inclusion Strategy, after which a Consumer Protection Framework and National Financial Literary Framework were developed to entrench fair treatment of consumers amongst financial services providers.
Over 400 participants drawn mainly from the financial sector attended the two-day conference which featured goodwill messages and presentation of four national policy documents.
