The United Bank for Africa, UBA, paid over N75 million on sanctions to different regulatory bodies in the banking sector in 2017. This is as confirmed by a PREMIUM TIMES analysis of its financial statement for the year ending December 2017 has shown.
Checks revealed that the penalties were paid for various offenses ranging from failure to detect single Bank Verification Number, BVN, wrongly linked to accounts owned by different individuals to the introduction of unauthorized charges.
A breakdown shows that during the year, the bank paid N40 million for failing to detect single BVN wrongly linked to accounts owned by different individuals and N10 million as penalty for failing to promptly refund excess charges against the accounts of a customer.
For introducing unauthorized monthly maintenance charges, the bank was fined N2 million while a separate while a separate N1 million was paid by the bank as penalty for late rendering of returns on international cards.
As penalty arising from FX examination between April to September 2016, the bank was fined N10 million while the sum of N10 million was paid as penalty arising from risk-based supervision examination on September 30, 2016.
On December 31, 2016, a few infractions arose from the CBN/NDIC risk assessment report and the bank was fined N6 million and N2 million was also paid as penalty arising from spot check on CBN wholesale forwards on February 21, 2017.
The various regulatory bodies in the banking sector routinely impose sanctions as a means of strengthening corporate governance in the financial institutions and ensuring transparency.
But there have been concerns about why management of banks often violate the rules and regulation of banking operations, thus leading to payment of sanctions from money that ought to accrue to shareholders as dividend.
While analysts opine that banking operations is huge and complex thus making it almost difficult to record a hitch-free operation throughout the financial year, they add that regulatory bodies should come up with tighter sanctions to control the infractions and make management of banks comply with the rules.
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