By Odimmegwa Johnpeter, Abuja
The Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), has assured depositors of Heritage Bank that there is no need to panic as it is already in the process of repaying their monies. An assurance that will go a long way to assuage the apprehension of its customers when the Central Bank of Nigeria announced the bank’s liquidation.
The Managing Director of NDIC, Bello Hassan, disclosed this at a press briefing where he outlined the repayment processes, insisting that the corporation will not take 30 days as stipulated by law but settle customers within one week.
He noted that the NDIC and its staff were already positioned in all the locations where the bank exists, saying the process of verifying insured deposits has already commenced.
His words: ”All depositors are currently being verified for onward payment of insured benefit of N5 million, depositors with insured deposits above N5 million will be paid upon the sale of the assets of the bank”.
He added, “The 2023 NDIC Act recommends payment of liquidated banks within 30 days, you recall that initially, the recovery rate was low but with the new Act, the NDIC has been given more powers.
“The NDIC is poised to do this within one week for the insured depositors. There is no time frame for repaying the uninsured depositors.
The NDIC boss said so far, the amount of deposits at the liquidated Heritage Bank stands at N650 billion but could be more by the end of verification while loans borrowed and unrepaid in the bank stand at N700 billion.
Hassan explained, “There are about 2.3 million depositors with Heritage Bank, with 116 branches of the bank across the country, 99.9% of the depositors have a balance of less than N5 million, only about 4,000 people have a deposit of 5 million and above with the bank.
“Our guarantee of repayment is per depositor, which means if you have three accounts, savings, current or whatever, we will merge the three accounts because you are one person, after that we determine the amount you are to be paid ranging from five million and below”, he added.
The ongoing liqiudation process by the NDIC follows its appointment by the apex bank as the liquidator of the bank under Section 12 (2) of BOFIA, 2020.
According to the CBN, the decision to revoke Heritage Bank’s licence is to strengthen public confidence in the banking system and ensure that the soundness of the financial system is not impaired.
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