The Central Bank of Nigeria has compelled banks that deducts monies illegally from customers’ accounts for products and services to refund the money with interest.
Consumer Complaints Management, Consumer Protection Department, CBN, Fada David says the Monetary Policy Circular of the CBN gives certain guidelines as to how much should be refunded to customers if excess charges are discovered.
David assured bank customers that the CBN monitors all banks regularly to make sure that banks do not short-change them.
The CBN response is in reaction to complaints by bank customers over excess charges by banks through Automated Teller Machine withdrawals.
The guideline by the CBN to rogue banks in Nigeria is welcome although its belated but better than nothing.
l said its belated because it has been going on for long time and the CBN closed its eyes as the regulatory bank. Nigerian banks may have defrauded the customers through illegal charges such as ATM, SMS alert charges and none payment of savings interests in the tune of N100 billion.The CBN guideline on SMS alert charge is N4.00 per an alert but the banks charge N4.00 – N28.00 on an alert and even duplicate the alert 2 or 3 times, import phone numbers into customers account and start deducting
fraud SMS alert charges and will refuse to cancel it when challenged, Union bank of Nigeria and FCMB should please note. The federal government of Nigeria must established Financial Service s Authority (FSA) to protect the bank customers in Nigeria, the CBN is not doing enough. The author of this comment requests the CBN to tell bank customers where and how to make complaints to CBN compliant department department