NGN10,000,000.00 Bank Customer Complaint

The bold headlines in the Newspapers the next day rattled the Bank’s Management. It appeared as though the media had not published any sensational headline in a while. It made an interesting read how a Bank customer would present her Passbook and International Passport as evidence of her absence from the country for about ten years and the big question was, if she was out of the country for that long what happened to her money? More interesting, was the fact that it was not possible to transact on the customer’s account without booking entries of the transaction in her passbook as was the practice.
This was a very bad timing for the Bank to have such a sensational headline in the media, because the apex Bank had just flagged off the recapitalization process and it was not the time to embarrass any Bank as being incapable of managing their customer/banker relationship.

The Bank officers, like most citizens, read the embarrassing account of the N10,000,000.00 Bank Customer Complaint in the papers the following morning and as expected, the Bank Management was calling for answers.

The “first aid” thing to do in the circumstance, was to stop the hemorrhaging as quickly as possible before finding out the “how”, the “what”, the “why” and the “when” and the background to exactly where the NGN10,000,000.00 went.

The Customer Care of the Bank was mandated to get the customer’s details and to invite her urgently to the Bank’s Head Office while the newspaper report was hurriedly made available to the Customer’s Ombudsman for a prompt intervention and instant resolution by putting out the fire!
The first established fact, was that the customer was actually out of the country for that long (10 years) and had not transacted on her account since she had her Passbook with her. The second established fact, was that the customer’s account had become dormant after at least two (2) years of inactivity. The third established fact, was that the Bank ought to know what happened to the customer’s NGN10,000,000.00, because it was placed in their care as her banker.

The Bank customer walked into the Customer’s Ombudsman’s Office being invited by the Bank for prompt resolution of the issues. The customer once again recounted her tale and her account opening package/ records were screened in details by the Customer’s Ombudsman.

It became apparent that over a period of 3-5 years when customer’s account was inactive, some “activities were ongoing in her account and there were postings into the electronic ledger in bits of NGN500,000.00 “withdrawals” over a period until the account was in the red.

The Customer’s Ombudsman apologized to the customer and requested for a week to put a report across to the Bank’s Management for an early resolution. The Customer’s Ombudsman also requested that the customer should also allow the resolution process by not engaging the press further on the subject.

The Customer’s Ombudsman in his report to the Bank’s Management, requested for a total refund of the NGN10,000,000.00 and accrued interest thereon to the customer as it was obvious that an inside fraud had just occurred on the customer’s account.

The Customer’s Ombudsman’s report submitted further, that the customer’s identity and details may have been cloned by third parties, but not without the knowledge of some insider teller officers, who must have colluded with the third parties, to, over time, withdraw the NGN10,000,000.00 from the customer’s account, as though it was the customer transacting on her account.

This was possible, because the third parties and the in-house tellers were perhaps a hundred percent sure that this customer must have been deceased, as ten (10) years was a very long time of inactivity on an often very busy savings account.

The Bank’s Management approved the Customer’s Ombudsman’s report and a total refund of the NGN10,000,000.00 with accrued interest was paid back to the customer and the Ombudsman invited back the customer for a close-out meeting to further apologize to the customer and to restate the Bank’s resolve to always do the right thing because the customer’s interest was of utmost importance to the Bank.

While this NGN10,000,000.00 Bank Customer Complaint was adjudged closed to the customer as having been resolved, further investigation by the Inspection Unit revealed those who had colluded to defraud the customer. A confessional statement was extracted and a total of four culprits were apprehended and handed over to the authorities for prosecution.

Indeed, before the sanitization of the banking industry, in-house fraud on customer’s accounts were very rampant, where staff of the Banks would quietly be scrutinizing customers’ account for long years of inactivity on the accounts. There was an assumption that the customer may have passed on and perhaps the customer’s family members were not aware of the credit balances, the customers held with the Banks.

Sometimes, in genuine cases where the customers were actually deceased, the cumbersome and costly process of obtaining Letters of Administration to administer the estate(s) of the deceased, including the deceased bank accounts, discouraged the family members from processing to withdraw the deceased customer’s credit balances.

This was especially so, for savings accounts, because they had to be operated personally and not by third parties. It is therefore not surprising that several Banks over the years, had to their “credit” sitting and untouched, huge credit balances of deceased bank customers who no one has come forward with valid legal documents to claim “ownership” of the funds.

The same is also prevalent in the stock market today, because there are so many unclaimed dividends warrants stocks/ shares of publicly quoted companies in the coffers of Registrars, that have been unclaimed for donkey years. This is apart from the fact that some of the publicly quoted companies, may have gone into oblivion or wounded-up, or acquired, with the shares, stocks and or dividend warrants of their deceased shareholders unclaimed.

At the conclusion of the Bank’s investigation, it was unveiled that this was not the first time for these fraudsters. It was found, that several Bank customers howbeit deceased had fallen “victim” and this NGN10,000,000.00 Bank Customer Complaint customer was their albatross.

The Bank handed the fraudsters to the authorities who further investigated, prosecuted and jailed the culprits. It would never be known what would be the fate of deceased customers of financial institutions who passed on leaving huge or small credit balances in their accounts unclaimed.

Perhaps, the apex Bank should go a step further to authorize the Banks to, after a reasonable long time that some credit balances have been sitting in the account of “deceased” customers, to check through their records and to contact their surviving family members to claim these funds. The same may be said of international Banks where huge sums of money may have been starched and the customers may have passed on with no one having any clue to these funds.

Perhaps, it is also time for the Banking Laws to examine the status of “idle” and “unclaimed” funds in financial institutions and what to be done to such funds?

The morale of this report from the stable of the Customer’s Ombudsman is not to have “secret” bank accounts, unknown by family members or next-of-kin, as the beneficiaries in the event of demise, may be third parties, other than family members.

Dr. UwemAkangson is a Customer’s Ombudsman, a Member of the International Ombudsman Association, (IOA) USA, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, (ACIArb) UK, an Alumni of the Harvard Business School (HBS) & a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) Nigeria.

For a better society