BY MAYOWA SAMUEL
The Central Bank of Nigeria has placed at least 6,047 Bank Verification Numbers of bank customers under its watch list for suspected fraudulent transactions.
This is contained in the CBN Financial Stability June 2022 report published in December 2022, which also revealed that 11,871 BVNs have been watch-listed as deceased persons this year.
The report disclosed that the apex bank conducted an assessment of 28 banks and the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System to ascertain compliance with the Regulatory Framework for BVN Operations and Watch-List for the Nigerian Banking Industry in the review period.
Noting that the assessment revealed some infractions which prompted necessary actions to be taken, the report further disclosed that there were 2.72 million BVN enrolments in the first half of 2022, bringing the total number of enrolled BVNs to 54.65 million.
The report also stated that the number of BVN-linked accounts was 130.57 million out of 148.46 million active accounts.
The report read in part, “Also, 2,722,518 BVNs were enrolled, bringing total BVN enrolment to 54,651,086, reflecting an increase of 5.24 per cent over 51,928,568 enrolments at end-December 2021.
“The number of accounts linked with BVNs was 130,569,656 out of 148,462,947 active customer accounts, while the number of watch-listed BVNs associated with fraud and deceased persons stood at 6,047 and 11,871, respectively.”
Based on the report, the total number of watch-listed BVNs for fraud rose by 13.09 per cent from 5,347 in December 2021 to 6,047 in June 2022.
