Banks send warning to customers with non-performing loans

As the August 2015 deadline that the Central Bank of Nigeria gave banks to publish names of chronic debtors in at least three national dailies approaches, banks have started sending warning messages to their customers.

Hallmark investigations showed that apart from using Short Messages Services (SMS) and letters to their customers, some of the commercial lenders have taken to the pages of newspapers to intimate their delinquent debtors on the need to pay-off their debts or risk having their names published in national dailies.

Diamond Bank in an advert published in some newspapers two days ago told its customers that all its “debtors whose principal and interest obligations have fallen due and remain unpaid for up to 360 days to immediately liquidate their indebtedness to the bank.”

“Failing the above, the bank will be constrained to, amongst other measures, submit their names to the CBN as well as publish the names and other relevant details in the national dailies as required by the above CBN directive.

This will be exclusive of all the other rights the bank may have to recover all sums due to it,” the bank stated in the advert.

The spokesperson for Diamond Bank, Mr. Ikechukwu Omeife, confirmed to Hallmark that the bank has fully informed all its customers of this CBN directive, so that they won’t claim ignorance.

On its own part, Keystone Bank, which has been acquired by Skye Bank, in an advertorial, directed its customers with non-performing loans to forward proposals “for turning their accounts non-performing to performing status before the expiration of the deadline.”

“The measures prescribed by the CBN will not prejudice or hinder Keystone Bank from on-going and continued drive to recover debts owed to it,” the lender warned.

The CBN had in April after its Bankers Committee Meeting in Lagos directed all DMBs to expose their chronic debtors by publishing their names and that of their directors in national dailies as a way of scaling down the rate of non-performing loans in the nation’s financial sector.

The apex bank also threatened to bar all bad debtors from participating in the country’s foreign exchange market.

Unity Bank had recently published the names of some of its chronic debtors and claimed that the exercise helped in reducing its non-performing loans drastically.