CIBN Unveils Agency Banking Certification Program to Strengthen Financial Inclusion System

Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIBN) has unveiled Agency banking certification for point of sales (POS) agents, NIN /BVN agents, Agent network managers, customer service officers, agent banking personnel in the banks and Fintech companies.

The programme was launched at the 16th annual conference of the institute held in Abuja recently.

Ken Opara, the President and Chairman of Council, CIBN, said that the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), introduced the Agent banking certification program (ABC) to address capacity challenge in the ecosystem.

“Agent banking has been the key driver of financial inclusion, which creates financial access points and ultimately eradicating poverty.

“It is democratising banking services, taking it to the grass root and connecting to the nooks and crane of the country.

“The certification program which details can be accessed on www.myabc.ng provides all round knowledge, practical engagement with industry experts and participation in standard procedures for conducting Agent banking business in Nigeria,” he said.

Professor (Mrs) Olayinka David West, Lagos Business School, said that the certification program is good and welcome idea which will build and extend standardization and credibility to agency banking framework that started slowly and now a legitimate channel for delivering banking services.

“Ensuring that Agents have the right knowledge and skill-set to deliver quality customer experience on behalf of regulated institution with credibility is important.

“Using indirect channel to deliver services has challenge of trust and to ensure that customers are protected requires equipping the third party with the right knowledge for transparency,” she added.

Mrs. Olanike Kolawole, Head of Agency banking, Ecobank, said that the programme is a welcome development and shows that financial institution has embraced agency banking as a channel for financial inclusion and delivery of financial services to unbanked.

“To set up a bank branch requires between N300m to N350M while to set up an agent is just having a trusted person with Point of Sale terminal and he/she does the same services that a bank branch will do. So, it is cheaper for us and we see them as partners hence strengthening their operation through certification for professionalism.

Fasasi Sarafadeen Atanda, member, CIBN sub-committee on Agent Banking Certification program, said that Nigerians can now look forward to more knowledgeable and professional POS Agents, mobile money agents, bank customer service desk that knows what to do when you are debited by POS, more understanding from security agents that will see certified agents and treat cases from agent transaction professionally etc.

“It has been a lot of work from the ideation, to conception, to proposition, to adoption and to commission in the programme.

“There is a lot of complains about proliferation of unregistered agents in the ecosystem. What we are doing is banking because when you are doing cash -in cash- out, account opening among others. Most of these services require professionalism.

“The account opening that we pushed for, resulted to not palatable experience because greater per centage of accounts opened at agent location were used for fraud. This actually made some banks to stop account opening at agent location.

“Not every agent can handle Biometric Verification Number and National Identity Number, any agent that wants to handle these registrations must be certified by CIBN. We have seen that most of the error seen in the process are from agent location.

“They do sharp practices, unethical practises, not doing due-diligence due to poor training and lack of professionalism, if they had pass through this process of certification, they would have been trained on maintaining ethical standard,” he said.

He noted that, agents that are handling high volume transactions have to be professionals. “Today, we see agents processing N2.5million for customer when there are issues on it they don’t have KYC of such customer. High volume transactions should be process by certified agents,” he added.

Benefits of Agent certification includes Professionalism and differentiation; Secured from security agent harassment; Classification to handle specialized banking service; Pre-qualification to participate in major government projects; Access to business finance; Networking opportunities and Capacity Building.