Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), in collaboration with other stakeholders have extended the Shared Agent Network Expansion Facility (SANEF) to 25 States of the Federation from the 13 States in March.
SANEF is a project powered by the CBN, DMBs, Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement Systems, licensed Mobile Money Operators (MMOs) and Shared Agents with the primary objective of accelerating financial inclusion in Nigeria.
The initiative involves on-boarding 40 million low income and unserved Nigerians into the financial system, increasing financial access points from the current 50,000 to 500,000 by 2020 and deepening access to mobile and digital financial products and services such as savings accounts, micro loans, insurance, pensions by Nigerians.
Presenting an update of the project to the media, Titilola Shogaolu, divisional CEO, Interswitch Financial Inclusion Services, said since the launch of SANEF in March 2018, more people have been empowered, and more have been employed.
We have done trainings in different region, including Anambra, Kebbi and Kano among others. We have done market storm in Kaduna, Kano and a few other states, sensitising and creating awareness.
Others who addressed the media are Bolaji Lawal, a member of the Technical Committee, SANEF, Stanley Jacob, committee of e-Business industry heads (CeBIH), Victor Etuokwu, executive director, personal banking, Access Bank PLC, and others.
They noted the creation of over 70,000 new financial access points, and that nine operators are currently party to SANEF with N4.5 billion disbursed.
There are plans to scale up Bank Verification Number (BVN) to 70 million by 2020 from 33 million currently. Already, 10,000 remote BVN devices have been ordered by NIBSS and currently being deployed to Banks, MMOs and Super Agents.
SANEF committee also disclosed that NIBSS and the banks are committed to enroll 40 million new unique BVNs between now and year 2020, of which 10 million would be enrolled in 2018, 15 million in 2019 and 15 million in 2020, adding that NIBSS will pay agents N100 for every unique BVN enrolled.
The SANFE project will see new product design that will help deepen financial inclusion such as a savings account bundled with an array of features (insurance, pension, micro credit). This will create a pull factor to attract the financially excluded into the system.
The committee will be liaising with regulators (CBN, NAICOM) to secure approval and launch of the product by October 1, 2018. Other products planned include: micro retail loans, micro retail savings, retail insurance, and micro pensions.
Etuokwu sees SANEF as a national assignment that requires collective strength to pull resources together to create a common standard for service delivery.
HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE
