“You can go,” the female bank customer relations officer said to Okundaye, a 31-year-old administrative staff of one of the largest recruitment firms in Nigeria.
“Really? Should I expect a resolution today?” Okundaye asked the officer who was now starring at the monitor in front of her with a serious look. For nearly a minute she ignored his question. When she finally did lift her head to answer, the smile on her face screamed “fake” but she managed it well.
“Come back in 8 working days.”
A cold chill swept through Okundaye’s body. His company, for some reason, was migrating the entire staff salary accounts to a new bank and needed everyone to open an account with the new bank. The memo sent to his email had made it clear that anyone who does not have a new account with the bank will not be paid.
The new bank however was proving difficult, insisting there will not be any account opening for those whose name on the Bank Verification Number (BVN) did not correspond with the one on a ‘valid’ ID. A valid ID in Nigeria includes an international passport, national identity card, drivers’ license, and voter’s card. Unfortunately for Okundaye, the new bank had called him shortly after he submitted the bank opening form to inform him of the new predicament.
First the old bank had requested for an affidavit, a change of name in a national newspaper and his passport before they could commence the process of adding the name. Okundaye thought it was too much to ask for until he had to wait 8 working days and his company’s payday was three days away. The nightmare continued as 8 days turned to 14 days and when he reached out to the bank on their social media channels, the answer he kept receiving was,
“We apologize for this inconvenience, your complaint is receiving attention and you will be updated with a resolution shortly.”
The resolution later came 22 days after. He nearly missed the next month’s payday.
Why does a bank with all the details of the customer already on its system courtesy of BVN have difficult protocols just to add a name to an already existing BVN? What would it cost for the new bank to place a friendly call to the old bank and get the problem resolved? Why put the customer through so much inconvenience?
“I had to threaten them with an intention to petition Consumer Protection Council (CPC) and CBN before, before they solved the problem. By then, I have borrowed nearly the entire salary to take care of my family,” Okundaye told BusinessDay.
Millions of bank customers face Okundaye’s dilemma on a daily basis. Whether it is a transaction gone wrong and you want the bank to stop, or you were debited for a failed PoS transaction, or a simple request for bank statement, or getting feedback on bank overcharge, delays have become inevitable.
Small business loan seekers have seen the different sides of banks’ “come back in…working days.” Sometimes it stretches till infinitum. Often they get too frustrated and move on to other things.
“You will think that adopting technology will make everything easier, but maybe banks should just stick to banking and leave fintech alone, because they are frustrating people who want to embrace these innovations,” Okundaye said.
To be fair a lot has improved with banks embracing financial technology. In fact the growth of fintech in Nigeria has more to do with banks’ contributions than any individual’s effort. It was banks’ involvement through companies like Unified Payment and Interswitch that led to the deployment of Automated Teller Machines (ATM), Point of Sale (PoS) and card transactions. Banks patronage of eTranzact also facilitated the invention of USSD payment and mobile money services.
Today’s banks have become first movers in financial technology (Fintech) pioneering innovations like WhatsApp banking and have elevated chatbot banking from Nigeria to the global stage.
But “It appears the banks are becoming too distracted by digitalization and ignoring the most important person in the value chain – the customer,” a fintech expert who chose to remain anonymous said.
Although banks’ fintech products have significantly reduced the inconvenience customers would have faced interfacing with human elements, it has also created new pain points.
For instance, most banks’ mobile applications now enable customers to recharge their phones on any network. In recent times, a lot of complaints has emanated from banks not being quick enough to respond when transactions fail. It is similar to complaints about PoS transaction failures and many bills payments.
On September 23, 2018, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had in response to growing complaints of non-reversal of customers’ fund, issued the Regulation on Instant (Interbank-Bank) Electronic Funds Transfer Services in Nigeria. The regulation among other things provided that it is the responsibility of banks and other financial entities to;
“Refund into customer’s account full proceeds of failed transactions returned by receiving entity within 10 minutes;
Refund into customer’s account full proceeds of transaction which the Sending Entity is unable to process within one (1) hour after the next settlement closure… Where it is impracticable for the Receiving Entity to credit the customer’s account within 60 seconds, due to scarcity, system or other considerations, the Receiving Entity shall notify the Sending Entity, beneficiary and or the EFT service provider(s) shall be notified of the issue with the assurance that pending credits will be applied as soon as the issue is resolved but not exceeding 24 hours.”
Going by the CBN’s guideline, no reversal should exceed 24 hours no matter what the situation is, but this is hardly the reality. Visits to most banks’ social media handles have shown that customers continue to wait days and even weeks before getting their issues resolved.
It also appears that there is disconnect between the customer relations officers inside the bank branches and the people handling the social media platforms as complaints laid at the physical branches never return with feedbacks unless the customer who made the complaint revisits the branch.
“There is the problem of poor technology infrastructure that is affecting the banks as well,” says a CEO of one of the switching companies that services most of the Nigerian banks. “The CBN can issue guidelines as many times as they like but until you address the infrastructure side of electronic payment you will continue to have payment and reversal lapses.”
Nonetheless, fintech or not, banks must make a commitment to continuously train their staff on management of customers’ expectation.
