NIGERIAN BANKS AND ADDRESS VERIFICATION- By Stephen Adeosun

Discussing the above, one cannot but tell a little story because hard working but hapless Nigerians have been suffering and are being cheated on daily basis.
Mr John is an Insurance broker in Lagos; he joined a co-operative in order to be able to buy a car. He had about N1.5 million in savings and loans, and looked forward to buying a Toyota Camry saloon car.
He saw an advertisement online “CUSTOM-SIEZED VEHICLES FOR SALE”, he called the number and he was offered a 2010 Toyota Camry for N600,000 only. The car was supposed to be in Kaduna and he was told he had to pay N50,000 only to bring the car to Lagos. He went ahead to pay. Unknown to John, he’s just been conned! 78 other people paid that week into the same account. Most frauds in Nigeria are perpetuated by people who open accounts with false documents, and use it for fraud, money laundering and terrorism.
According to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s, report for the first half of 2013 released on February 19, 2014, the apex bank said there were 2,478 fraud and forgery cases involving Nigerian banks valued at N22.4 billion.
The figure was higher than the 2,300 recorded cases, valued at N7.1 billion in the corresponding period of 2012. “Of this amount, actual loss incurred by the banks was N3.8 billion, representing 17.1 per cent of the total fraud amount, compared with N2.5 billion in the corresponding period of 2012, the amount involved in the fraud incidences also grew from N18.05 billion in 2012 to N21.79 billion in 2013”.
These frauds were perpetuated via fraudulent withdrawals from customers’ accounts, suppression and conversion of customers’ deposits, theft, illegal funds transfer, cheque defalcations, and fraudulent ATM withdrawals, among others. The British Bankers’ Association in her bulletin stated that “to open an account, banks need to know you are who you say you are and you live where you say you live, hence you need proof of identity and proof of address.
In the United Kingdom, addresses are verified by cross checking with the Electoral database, The Electoral database contains the list of all eligible voters` in the UK . From June 2014 residents need to include the National Insurance number on the Electoral Registration form, this has made the register more secure.
A UK National Insurance number is a unique personal number allocated to an individual for life and is used to identify him or her to HM Revenue & Customs and the Department of Work and Pensions.
Also in the United States of America, the nine-digit Social Security Number is needed to open an account.
The circle of validity is clear, without proven identity, a person can not have an NI or SSN, and without an NI/SSN/NID, it is not possible to open an account, without an account, there won’t be fraud.
It is difficult for Nigerian banks to meet the above requirements for all accounts because of the precarious and complicated nature of our identity and address management system.
In an effort to promote and deepen financial inclusion the CBN introduced the Three-tiers KYC (Know Your Customer) policy, which will enable “flexible account opening requirement for low-value and low –risk accounts that are subject to caps and restrictions as the amount of transactions increases.”
In an attempt to further remove the barriers to financial inclusion, the apex bank in a circular referenced: FPR/DIR/CIR/GEN/01/031, dated September 21, 2012, directed banks to accept voter’s registration card issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as a means of customer identification.
The stability within the banking sector and the increased awareness has led to an explosion in new accounts. To be able to meet the CBN guidelines and guard against fraud, Nigeria’s leading banks outsourced address verification to specialist companies.
In the process of putting this article together, Mr. Yemi Abereoje, the General Manager of Yamaguchi Nigeria an Address Verification and Management Company (AVMC) was approached to shed more light. He took his time to describe the process.
According to Mr Abereoje, “AVMC`s should have trained address verifiers with knowledge of the local area and equipped with android tablets and CUG based mobile phones, in specific units in their geographical coverage areas.
Banks should have an effective mechanism for collection of customer’s details; an example is the Bank Address Verification Portal. An online portal will allow Customer Service Officers from all the branches of a bank to upload customers’ addresses in real time.
The AVMC will download the information from the Bank’s portal, the Information will be standardised, validated, spelling-checked, modified if need be and then sent via intranet to address verifiers in their respective states, towns and areas.
The verifiers will locate the address, if the address and the name are correct and the customer lives at the address, then the customer or a representative signs an acknowledgement slip and receives a welcome pack, the verifier then writes a report describing the house and location including the NPC number and then takes a picture.
Stephen Adeoshun sent this from: stephen@yamaguchigroup.net

INSURGENCY: OUR INVOLVEMENT

The dimension the insurgency is taking in Nigeria is obviously out of the hand of the Leadership. There is no doubting the fact that there is no solution in view. Still the issue is expanding everyday. families are crying daily over loss of properties and lives of the loved ones. Then our insensibility is becoming thicker. The Leaders are busy with the second or third term when their performance d...oes not merit "repitetion" (or continuity they call it).

The Religious leaders are keeping mute. The religious worship centres are increasing but the moral values and the overall national prosperities are not achieved. I see war coming. I see those mega churches and mosques coming to ruins. I see the great business empires in shambles in no distant times. I see more havocs coming. I am a chronic optimist. I abhor pessimism. I have come to realise that optimisim is in actions and not in words. Until we collectively stand for revolution.

Until the church gets fully involved. Until the mosque gets positively involved (I don't want to take the BH for Muslims for now), until the problem in the North becomes the problem of everybody, we will keep counting the losses till the insurgency becomes a National comflageration. We should remember that we have such a large population that not a single country in Africa will be able to accommodate the Nigerian Refugees. The eralier the better.

Let the religious Worship Centres pray for the Nation rather than the inconsequential selfish prayers against the unseen and the unknown enemies. Let's stop condemning the zealous ones getting into politics. If the good ones are not involved what great expectation is it from the bad eggs?

Let the followership insist on the good leadership. Let's defend our votes with everything we have got. Let us all make peaceful demonstration against injustice in the land. Let the youths arise. The future of the country is in our hands.

I stand for revolution! Both Spiritual and physical but Non-violent!

GENERATE THE VISION

YOU CAN GENERATE THE VISION

The fundamental key to success is to set a vision/goals for yourself.  All successful individuals are intensely goal driven. They are very clear about what they want and will single-mindedly focus their energy on attaining it. You have the capacity through your natural potential to succeed beyond your Wildest dreams. The secret is to set specific goals to turn your beliefs, ideas, and visions into practical, applicable life strategies. The following knowledge systems will help you in generating your vision and in setting your goals.

Vision Generation starts from centering your great imagination on your God-given inborn ability to achieve any goal you could ever set for yourself. You can go as far as you can see, if you keep on with the wheel of goal setting. It is a science and an art. It is a science because it is reasonable and an art because it is consciously learnable. The major tool of the unstoppable people is constant goals setting. They know what they want in their lives, careers, marriages, finances for their children, community and nation and with goals settings they achieve desired goals with celerity beyond all mortal explanations. By implication, setting goals is natural, realization process of the set goal is celestial.

It will amount to exercise in immense usefulness, if the goals are set around those activities that give you sense of meaning and purpose in life. You probably know yourself more than anyone does. It might not necessarily be on your academic acumen, it might even be completely out of what you have gone to school to study. The most important thing is you derive greatest sense of satisfaction in those activities. You do them with ease, little effort or outrightly effortlessly. It might be singing, dancing, running, soccer, public speaking, farming, decoration, event management, emcee, counseling, writing, engineering, accounting, medicine and the list is endless. When you engage in the activities and people are irresistibly glued to you, everything swings into your favour, then, set your goals of greatness around them. They might be the solution that the people need. You have suddenly become a solution. You have shot yourself to the limelight.

Look at your personal and work life today. In what way has your creative thinking brought great profit to your work? If your degree of productive contribution has made you obviously indispensable at your work place, then it will be of a priceless value to expand this area. Think beyond the box. Think beyond being the best staff of the year. Think beyond interminable awards of excellence in that place. Set a goal of distinction for yourself. Try to move higher in that place. Do all that will be required to be at the pinnacle of your career. You might as well think that you have all it takes to give your entrepreneurial rationale a boom by becoming an employer rather than an employee.

Another important area of vision generation is to take cognizance of what discussion always takes your fancy. What do you always want to hear? What is it that puts you off? If you like discussing people, you are yet to start. If it is only events, well, you are just average. When it is idea you talk about, then you have a great mind. Check that positive idea as it keeps coming. If you don’t take a step, nature will not be aware or informed of where to come in. It doesn’t really matter the magnitude of the idea, just take the first step. Read more book about the idea. Identify people who have excelled in similar idea. Get more information. Do something today. What will you do to bring this idea to reality? Who will you meet? Carefully, contact the positive minded people. Resolve to be determined and resolute. Form goals around it and never trivialize the place of prayer.

Now, resourceful people are those that will develop a particular vision and be willing, by all means, to pay the price for the actualization of the vision. The goals you set will require you to pay some prices. It could be leaving your old association, it could be dropping some unhealthy and injurious habits, it could be some personal development via formal or informal trainings, it could be a change of location, it could be through some form of pain. Some price will have to be paid. Whoever that will eat the honey from the rock will not mind what happens to the mouth of the axe. No pain, no gain. Remember “if it is to be it is up to me”. You pay to go to school. The Jews paid to get to the promised land. Those who see you carrying your cross now will soon celebrate with you while you are wearing your crown.

You can now ask yourself, what action am I going to take having gone through this piece. Be honest in yourself and come up with something ingenious. Look at yourself and see the greatness you are endowed with. Say to yourself “No more time wasting”. In our next Edition we shall be looking at “Taking Charge of your Life”.

Youth Arise: BEGIN WITH VISION

Youth Arise: BEGIN WITH VISION: The Youths of today are said to be the Leaders of tomorrow. This statement has become a cliché as its validity is contentious in this kin...

BEGIN WITH VISION

The Youths of today are said to be the Leaders of tomorrow. This statement has become a cliché as its validity is contentious in this kind of a clime where they are being daily enlisted in all manners of criminal atrocities. It is rather unfortunate that vast majority of them are still in alarming obscurity – motion without movement and picture without a future. Some are literate but not educated, some are aristocratically brought up and academically brilliant but clueless as regards the situation bedeviling the society. The youths in any nation outnumber the population of the others. Whether it is a fact or not is left for us to decide through some recent statistical research. I will rather not want to inundate you with lengthy numerical conundrum. The undeniable verity is that majority of the youth in  the streets are visionless (not a fallacy of hasty generalization). They possess no magnitude or direction. Hence, they are, rather than a blessing, a threat to the peace and desired anticipation of the society at large.

There are, of course, a few of the youths that are visionary. Those living their lives with purpose, desire, decision, determination and discipline to follow through. They are infinitesimal in number, but such are being envied, frustrated, endangered and even killed by those visionless youths who have enthusiastically embraced mediocrity in polity, philosophy and religion. It is a paramount project to start calling several of them to come to terms with the awareness of the necessity for living a life of vision and living a life indeed. A man that is yet to realize the purpose for living is dead to all that make life worthy of living. He is a dangerous man!

What is Vision? It can be described as the faculty or state of being able to see ahead. It can also be the picture of the future. According to Christopher S. Penn,  “vision is being able to see where you’re going, to see what’s up the road ahead, in both literal and figurative senses. It’s being able to see the potholes before you drive the car into them, being able to skillfully navigate”. The problem facing most of the youths, to continue the car analogy, is that most of them are driving using the rear window to navigate. They are steering based on where they have been, and maybe, just maybe they catch a glimpse out the side windows for what is happening to them right now. They don’t know where they are driving, They can’t see the sharp turn in the road ahead, and they believe that past is prologue, that biography is destiny. Most important, vision is about knowing where they are going, so that they know if they are there, and even more vital, knowing if they are off course and not any closer to our goal. Now we see why we are where we are in macroscopic society.

The Holy Writ says “Where there is no vision, people perish”. Not only the visionless will perish, the innocent visionaries will also be part by ripple effect. The events leading to the reckless extermination and destruction of numerous souls and properties being endlessly witnessed in the North lay a whole lot of credence to this. Also written in the same Holy Writ is “where there is no vision people cast of restrain”. When people don’t know where they are going, anywhere is a destination. No picture for the future, thus, there is no future. The tomorrow is more dangerous than today when the youths are without goals. Tomorrow is a death zone, when the supposed leaders of tomorrow are not responsible. Ye! Woe betides the country whose youths are only seen as social miscreants, an instrument of sanguinary engagement and political thugery.

Bill Gate had a vision and he followed it through. Now everybody is identified with him. Eliot Mark Zuckerbag, the Chairman of Facebook, actualized his vision and we all ‘facebook’ (lazing away the time). Two young guys – Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D students at Stanford University in America came up with Google Inc. They devoted their thinking and time resourcefully to be a solution to their world. A lot of us know Google, but very few know the Brains behind it. David in the Bible became a visionary as a youth. Nigeria is being relentlessly castigated by the people that are responsible for her woes. Should we flood our thought with the better way to castigate or develop ideas that will right the wrong? The vision starts with us.

Let’s ponder over it, what is the reason for living? Ask yourself, what is in me? Why am I different from others succeeding? What is the difference between the achievers and non-achievers? Nothing moves until you move. The first step is to create a vision. The next edition  will dwell pertinently on vision generation.