PROTECT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT FROM UNAUTHORISED ACCESS - BVN

By : Kehinde Odofin

Mr. John Brown is strongly considering opening a bank account, but the disturbing story of how the banking public has lost huge sums of money to fraud and how a single individual can operate different accounts without being detected has kept him dissuaded. The reason why Mr. John was discouraged was obvious. “How can one get himself in a banking system that does not have trust in itself let alone the trust of the banking public whose identity are being stolen on regular basis?”  This is the question agitating the mind of Mr. John. He is confused and dispirited. But there seems to be hope for him and millions of other Nigerians who are in the same dilemma. The hope lies in a new technology that runs on Biometric data.

The Central Bank of Nigeria in collaboration with all the banks in Nigeria has introduced Bank Verification Number (BVN) as a unique identification number for bank customers. The BVN gives each bank customer a unique identity across the Nigerian banking industry that can be used for easy identification and verification at point of banking operations. To get your BVN, a bank customer enrolls at any branch of a bank where he/she has an account or intends to open an account for the BVN enrolment. 

The BVN enrolment process involves capturing of an individual’s basic bio-data and unique biometric features, including the fingerprints and facial image. The BVN issued at the point of enrolment will be linked to all bank accounts of the individual in Nigeria.The goal of the BVN is to uniquely verify the identity of each bank’s customer for ‘Know Your Customer’(KYC) purposes.

How would the BVN work? Every bank has a server that warehouses all the database of all their account holders that have a BVN and also the banking network has branches, each bank branch will connect to that server, do the enrolment and that server pushes the data to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS). “At NIBSS, we search through our own system, find out if there is a march, if there is no march, we will issue a BVN which we will go back to pick up. If there is a march, we will alert the bank to be aware that there is something suspicious and so the banks can take much more informed decisions,”
This enrolment process is done only once and your BVN will be linked to all your bank accounts across Nigeria Banks.

“The BVN solution is to ensure accountability, protect bank customers’ account from unauthorised access, reduce exposure to fraud, check identity theft, enhance credit advancement to bank customers, and also encourage financial inclusion.” This initiative addresses issues of identity theft and ensures that your bank accounts are protected from unauthorised access, thus reducing your exposure to fraud. This solution will promote a safe and sound financial system in Nigeria, especially as it will keep records of suspected fraudulent individuals in the banking system. Please be informed that bank customers living outside Nigeria would have to come back to the country to enroll because the customer’s physical features such as the fingerprints and facial image have to be captured. Also, the BVN number remains the same for life but expires after ten(10) years. After 10 years of issuance of the BVN, the customer goes back to his/her bank to re-enroll. 

However, many people questioned the essence of Bank Verification Number (BVN) when there is already a Uniform Bank Account Number (NUBAN)? Before answer is given, it is pertinent we understand the two concepts. BVN is a biometrics identification of customers in the financial industry launched by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in February 2014, which is aimed at revolutionising the payment system in the country. The introduction of BVN authentication is targeted at addressing cybercrime, ATM fraud and other kinds of financial frauds as well as to safeguard customers’ funds to avoid losses through compromise of Personal Identification Numbers (PIN).

According to Isaac Okoroafor, acting director, Corporate Communications CBN, BVN is a number that enables one person to have a single identity within the financial system. “We came up with this to achieve a few things; people who cannot read and write to use their biometrics which cannot be replicated, to tackle incidence of identity theft and enable banks to really identify their customers in the overall context of Know Your Customer (KYC) initiative,” Okoroafor says.

The NUBAN is a 10-digit bank account numbering system that is simpler to use than traditional longer account numbering structures, and is in line with requirements of the West African Monetary Institute, towards the economic integration of ECOWAS countries. Every bank is required to create and maintain a NUBAN code for every customer account (current, savings, etc.) in its customer records database, and the NUBAN code would be the only account number to be used at all interfaces with a bank customer. The CBN released the guidelines on NUBAN scheme in August 2010, to achieve uniform customer bank account numbering structure among all Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria, within nine months of that period. NUBAN has great potentials to resolve the observed problems with electronic payments in Nigeria, as many of them are related to specification of wrong beneficiary account numbers.

In response to the above question, Oluseyi Adenmosun, biometric project, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) plc., explains that BVN identifies you across the banking industry, while NUBAN identifies you in your own bank, saying “NUBAN is NUBAN, and BVN is BVN. Banks Verification Number identifies you across the industry. Uniform Bank Account Number identifies you in your bank. We are not changing anything. NUBAN stays, BVN stays, they do separate things even though they look alike.”

Explaining the reason for BVN, Okoroafor says: “The incidence of fraud in the banking system, identity theft, even the challenges that have to do with the inadequacies in our country and trying to situate this in the context of financial inclusion, and we realising that because so many people are not educated – they cannot read and write, they are unable to key effectively into the cashless policy and electronic banking policy. “So, the bankers committee came up with a one bullet solution that will take care of these – that will check fraud, prevent identity theft, and make ordinary people who cannot read and write to also make financial transactions, and we came to realisation that we can do a few things to help solve some of these financial challenges in our financial system, the bank came up with this BVN.”

Deducing from the above, the benefits of enrolling for a BVN cannot be underestimated. The BVN helps to reduce fraud, increase the efficiency of banking operations and also enable customer access to future credit facilities. The BVN exercise will enable the hitherto unbanked individuals/ ordinary people who cannot read and write to also make financial transactions through their biometrics (fingerprint). Also, there would be no one means of identifying persons who transact business with the financial services industry. The BVN enrolment will make it inconvenient for fraudsters to open accounts in several banks with different names, addresses and means of identification. “It makes it easy for the users of the platform to type in a person’s unique number and obtain needed information/details on such a person rather than struggling with searching with the name, date of birth, address information, among others”, the Managing Director /Chief Executive Officer, CRC Credit Bureau, Mr. Ahmed Tunde Popoola, explained. Considering the above-mentioned benefits obtainable when you get your BVN, wouldn’t you rather visit your Bank to enroll today?