By Bababjide Komolafe

There are indications that banks may not to meet the deadlines for the enrolment of their customers for the Biometric Verification Number (BVN) due to staff indifference to the enrolment exercise.

Recall that last month the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) directed banks to ensure that 40 percent of their customers are enrolled for the BVN by December 31st 2014. It also gave them till March 31st 2015 to enroll 70 percent of the customers for the BVN.

Though most of the banks have stepped up efforts to educate their customers and encourage them to enroll for the BVN, these have mostly been limited to email and text messages. Investigation reveals lack of similar efforts at the branch level in most banks.

For example, in some of the branches visited by Vanguard, there was little or no effort to create awareness about enrollment for the BVN either by signatures, banners or by word of word of mouth by customer relations officer and tellers attending to customers across the counters.

Investigation revealed that in some of the branches, the BVN enrollment was discussed at meetings but there was no follow up to ensure that tellers and customer relations officers were encouraging customers to go for the enrolment.

This however is despite the fact that there were dedicated desks and staff for the enrollment exercises in most branches.

As a result, the enrollment of customers for the BVN has been in trickles or at very slow pace in most banks.

Confirming this development to Vanguard, a staff in charge of the BVN enrollment in one of the top three banks, said, “Our management have been complaining that the pace of the enrollment is slow, and that we not meeting our target.”

Investigation revealed that tellers are the major culprit in this regard. Though they attend to millions of customers every day, they rarely speak or encourage customers to go for the enrolment.

The BVN was introduced by the CBN to give each customer a unique identification number based on picture and fingerprint (biometric) capture of the customer.

Though introduced February this year, enrollment of customers have been slow. This prompted the CBN to introduce measures to fast-track the exercise.

In a circular dated Tuesday October 21, 2014 and signed by Dipo Fatokun, Director, Banking and Payments System Department, the CBN said that all credit customers must have BVN by December 31, 2014.

The circular stated, “You will recall that the CBN in collaboration with the Bankers Committee launched the BVN project in February 2014. As part of the overall strategy of ensuring the effectiveness of Know Your Customer (KYC) principles, the BVN gives each bank customer a unique identity across the Nigerian banking industry,” the circular affirmed.

“It has observed that deposit money banks are making steady progress towards the enrollment of their customers. However the attention of CBN has been drawn on the need to clarify grey areas in the process of enrollment of the customers on BVN”.

The apex bank said it had therefore become necessary for it to issue clarifications for the stakeholders to note and implement.

“Where an existing customer wishes to register the BVN with his or her bank, capturing his signature and photo identification documents may not be necessary, as the bank is expected to have those records during the account opening.