The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is set to remove bank accounts not linked to the Bank Verification Number (BVN) system from the financial system in an effort to reduce fraud.
Blaise Ijebor, the Director of the Risk Management Department and Chief Risk Officer at CBN, announced this at the Prembly Compliance Breakfast Dialogue on Thursday.
Ijebor explained that cybercriminals exploit three loopholes in the system, including the use of Tier-1 accounts, which can be opened with minimal documentation and are not linked to BVN.
These accounts have low deposit limits and are popular among unbanked populations, making them easy targets for fraudsters.
As of March 31, 2023, report from the NIBSS website indicates that there are only 57.01 million registered BVN numbers out of the total 191.4 million bank accounts in the country, with 133.5 million active.
