By Naomi Uzor

The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) on Wednesday said it disbursed more than N7  billion to 800 beneficiaries so far in 2017.

Managing Director of FMBN,   Ahmed Dangiwa, disclosed   this at the FMBN 2017 Management Retreat in Abuja, with the theme “Towards Improving FMBN Transaction Turnaround Time”.

Naira notes

Dangiwa noted that the focus of the bank’s loan was to ensure completion of ongoing projects and recovery of FMBN financial outlay presently tied down.

He said that the bank recovered N2.4 billion in 2017 against a cumulative figure of N8.3 billion as at 2016.

According to him, the retreat will underscore the intention of the new management for a quick positive turn-around in all facets of the bank’s operations.

Dangiwa said that the bank was micro-managing some of the housing estates to forestall diversion of funds and ensure recovery of loans.

He stated: “The new management has also made a total refund payment of N6.6 billion to 44,370 beneficiaries in 2017 against a cumulative figure of N7.4 billion as at 2016.  Our backlog of unaudited accounts is expected to be cleared before the end of the year.”

The FMBN boss said the bank’s effort to implementing risk management framework was ongoing, while it was being assisted by the Institute of Directors to make the bank an institute of sound cooperate governance culture.

He said the mortgage market was subject to myriad of legislative requirements including the requirement for governor’s consent before a mortgage transaction could be legal.

In order to address this, he said, the bank created the Internal Records Office as an interim measure to secure its loans and provide some form of equity to cover loan facilities.