CBN Sets Monthly Customer Target for MFBs

• CBN Sets Monthly Customer Target for MFBs

The Central Bank of Nigeria has set a new target of 64 new customers for micro finance banks in Nigeria, as part of its efforts to achieve its financial inclusion target.

The banking regulator stated this in a letter to all microfinance banks on the revised National Financial Inclusion targets on Tuesday.

In a bid to mobilise stakeholders on the revised national financial inclusion strategy and accelerate progress towards the achievement of the target, the CBN held a stakeholders’ forum for all financial service providers in the six geo-political zones in the first and second quarters of 2019, which was attended by representatives of MFBs.

The objective of the forum was to expose stakeholders to the detailed provisions of the revised NFIS 2.0 and their expected roles in the financial inclusion agenda.

Part of the letter to the MFBs read, “One of the major resolutions reached at the event was the setting of a target for each branch of a microfinance bank to acquire 64 new customers per month.

“This translates to 774 new bank accounts (measured by new BVN registration) per branch per year. Given the urgency of this task, it is important to cascade the target to your branches for their information and implementation.”

Consequently, it added that all MFBs were requested to implement the above resolution and disseminate same to all their branches (where applicable) to ensure concerted efforts towards achieving the overarching target of 80 per cent financial inclusion by the year 2020.

The CBN ordered the MFBs to submit a monthly report on new customers on-boarded to the director, other financial institutions supervision department.

Recall that the NFIS was launched in October 2012 and revised in 2018 with the major objective of increasing the percentage of adults in Nigeria who own bank accounts and use formal financial services from the baseline figure of 46.3 per cent in 2010 to 80 per cent by 2020.