NDIC to End Forbearances on Premium Payment to Banks

With the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic reducing, the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has announced that it will end forbearances on premiums given to some banks by next year.

Speaking at the stakeholders’ retreat with members of Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, the Executive Director Operation, NDIC, Mustapha Ibrahim said the banking industry in the country has become resilient.

Ibrahim who represented the Managing Director and Chief Executive of the NDIC, Bello Hassan said: “We have tried to immunise the system to withstand whatever shocks that may be impacting on the Nigerian economy and the financial system.

During the COVID era, we jointly actually took some measures in terms of extending forbearances, especially in the banking sector, and facilities extended by banks or insurance institutions generally to their customers.

“The NDIC also took the initiative to grant some kind of forbearance temporarily to some banks in terms of their premium payable during the period. Now that we are in the post-COVID era, definitely some of these forbearances, we will in collaboration with the central bank, begin to wind them down, possibly commencing next year.

For now, some of these measures are still there, because just after the pandemic, we are now grappling with the Russia and Ukraine war, and of course in this impacting globally, including Sub-Saharan Africa and Nigeria in particular is not an exception.”

Stating that regulators in the financial industry have a very robust supervisory framework, he said: “The risk based approach is actually proactive. For the most part, we try to anticipate all these risks, macro and micro as well as global, and domestically, to address continuously.”

Speaking, the Senate Committee Chairman, Senator Uba Sani said the committee in its efforts towards regularly engaging critical Stakeholders in the financial and banking sectors jointly organises retreats of this nature for discussion and painstaking analysis on a wide range of issues whose outcome will be of great benefit to the sectors and the Nigerian economy at large.

He noted that progress has been made in forging a solid, sustainable and workable relationship in the overall interest of the nation.