The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) saved over 12,667 jobs and secured N1.021 trillion deposits through its interventions in the banking sector.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD/CEO) of NDIC, Mr Bello Hassan, who disclosed this during the 2021 edition of the NDIC Editors Forum in Lagos, said pursuant to the provisions of the NDIC Act, several failure resolution initiatives such as Open Bank Assistance (OBA), Purchase and Assumption (P&A) and Mergers and Acquisition (M&A) were adopted in resolving distress in various banks from 1989, culminating in the novel Bridge Bank option to resolve four problematic banks in 2011 and 2018.
Mr Hassan said, “The Bridge Bank option did not only prevent a systemic crisis, it secured N1.021tn deposits, which ensured that depositors continued to access their funds and financial services. The implementation of the Bridge Bank option also saved over 12,667 jobs, while over 877 branch network and services of the affected banks were maintained.”
He further said the corporation also paid N1.274bn to 991 creditors and N4.886bn to 965 shareholders of banks in-liquidation as at September 30, 2021, while N3.413bn was paid to 90,945 insured depositors of Micro Finance Banks (MFBs) and ₦1.218m to uninsured depositors.
He also noted that the corporation’s deposit insurance coverage limits were not only adequate, but robust enough to engender confidence in “our banking system” as more than 97 per cent of depositors would be fully covered by the corporation in the event of bank failure.
He, however, listed slow recovery and realisation of assets, slow adjudication of cases, depositors’ apathy towards deposit verification, as well as indifference of customers of banks in-liquidation with small balances, among others, as some of the obstacles bedevilling the operations of the corporation.
