… Begins Verification, Payment of Depositors
Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) on Wednesday gave further insights into the worrisome financial position of the Heritage Bank Plc as at the time of takeover for liquidation, but reassured depositors of safety and payment of their respective insured deposits with effect from this week.
It would be recalled that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday, June 3, revoked the banking license of the Heritage Bank and appointed NDIC as the liquidator, leading to the immediate takeover of the bank by the Corporation.
Briefing Journalists on Wednesday, the NDIC Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Hassan Bello, revealed that the bank with about 116 branches and regional offices, had about 2.3 million depositors and a total deposits of about N650 billion while loans amounted to well over N700 billions. He said these amounts may vary at the end of the corporation’s investigations
He said for now, NDIC has deployed close to 400 of its staff to the locations of the bank offices so that they can take charge of the assets and records of the bank in efforts to engender confidence on the depositors of the bank to promote stability.
He assured depositors and creditors that the Corporation will go all out to ensure recovery of the loans using the powers reposed on it by the provisions of 2023 NDIC Act, notwithstanding the litigations that are sure to arise.
According to him, “At this early stage of the investigation process, what we are doing is to determine the claimants of the bank. These claimants are of two categories: we have depositors and creditors. The law states that there is priority in terms of payments, the depositors takes priority over all other claimants. So, we are going to start payments with creditors before we move to creditors.”
He explained that NDIC would leverage on the Bank Verification Number (BVN), implying that those with alternative back accounts would be identified with their BVN and be automatically be credited with their insured deposits up to maximum limit of N5 million.
However, he advised that depositors who had Heritage bank as their only bank, have to visit the Heritage bank branch nearest to them or NDIC offices for verification and identification by the NDIC staff on ground. On the alternative, he said such depositors can go online and make the necessary claims by filling form in NDIC website.
“This is what is required for us to pay the insured amounts. We are going to pay the insured amount now. This insured amount we are going to make this payment is from the Deposit Insurance Funds which have built overtime from premium we have bee collecting from these insured institutions on annual basis.
“Like I said, the maximum amount is N5 million per depositor. So, if you have N10, we pay you N10; if you have N100, we pay you N100; if you have N5 million, we pay you N5 million. If you have N10 million, we pay you N5 million now because that is the maximum insured amount.
“After this, the next process is for us to realize all the assets, both physical and the loans the bank granted while it was in operation. When we realize those assets, we will now declared what is called Liquidation dividends. And that is we will pay to the uninsured portion of the deposits. When we finish with depositors, we move to creditors if there is surplus from realization of those assets.
“From preliminary assessments, the total deposits is around N650 billion, but the loans are much more that, they are well above N700 billion. So, we believe that if we are able to recover all these loans, no depositor is going to lose his money. And even creditors, they’re going to be settled”, the NDIC Managing Director declared.
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