The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) has restated commitment to the speedy processing of qualified housing loan applications in line with its mandate to boost the provision of affordable housing to Nigerian workers that are registered contributors to the National Housing Fund (NHF) Scheme.
FMBN MD/CEO, Arc. Ahmed M. Dangiwa stated this while assessing results of the bank’s strategic efforts to clear backlog of housing loan applications; tackle longstanding issues of delay in the treatment of loan applications and disbursement of funds by subscribers to the NHF scheme.
He explained that the pro-active efforts of the current management of the bank have led to a 45 per cent increase in the FMBN’s speed of processing NHF housing loan applications and has been able to reduce substantially the huge backlog of loan applications it met on assumption of office two years ago.
He said: “While before it used to take an average of two years to process an NHF loan, we have been able to bring this down to four months. This is a significant improvement. Of course, we are still not where we want to be, but at least we are now moving in the right direction and intend to do more.
“From day one, improving the turnaround time of housing loan applications has been the priority of our management because we understood quite early that it has been a big issue over the years, which has led to the accumulation of huge backlog.
“When we came on board, we set out clear strategies to reduce that. And we have made decent progress.”