Commercial banks in Nigeria have posted a positive record in 2016 in the area of new customers coming on board as total accounts domiciling in the banks grew 13.17 per cent in the year.
The increase, which amounted to activation of 11.2 million new accounts, catapulted the total number of accounts to 96.22 million as at the end of the year’s Q’4 from 85.02 million accounts in the same period in 2015.
According to the latest industry statistics obtained yesterday from the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), the changes recorded in the year also included a rise in the number of redundant accounts in the system.
It is established that bank customers, including corporate bodies and individuals, have abandoned to dormancy an approximated 31 million bank accounts.
Whereas, there were only 26.04 million dormant accounts as at December, 2015, representing 30.63 per cent of the total account number of 85.02 million then.
NIBSS indicated that currently, out of the 96.22 million total account numbers, only 65.49 million or 68.06 per cent are active, leaving the remaining 31.94 per cent to dormancy.
It was also learnt that active accounts grew by 6.51 million or 11.04 per cent to stand at 65.49 million as at December ending from 58.98 million recorded same period in 2015.
Similarly, savings accounts grew 17.55 per cent from 58.39 million they stood in 2015 to hit 68.65 million in the same period, last year, while the folio of current accounts in the country also surged by 7.19 per cent from 23.3 million in 2015 to 24.94 million in 2016.
