Heritage Bank: We’ll Pay Customers’ Insured Deposits Within 1 Week–NDIC

The Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has promised that 99.9 per cent of the customers of closed Heritage Bank Plc would be paid their insured amount within a week. This is as the corporation disclosed that Heritage Bank had only 2.3 million customers’ deposit list.

NDIC said that 99.9 per cent of the bank customers have a total deposit of less than the insured N5 million in their accounts, making it comfortably easy to settle the depositors. It also said the remaining one per cent with deposits above N5 million would be paid a maximum of N5 million allowed by the 2023 NDIC Act. The banks’ deposit insurer said it would commence the payment of insured deposits by next week.

“Payment of this insured amount is going to keep off within a week. We are going to pay the insured deposit within one week,” managing director of NDIC Hassan Bello told reporters yesterday in an alanorate conference in Abuja. The guarantee is per depositor despite the number of accounts the customer has with the liquidated bank.

The corporation also disclosed that it would immediately go after debtors of defunct Heritage Bank Plc to recover more funds to pay the insured and insured amounts of depositors of the bank.

According to official documents, the failed bank had a loan record of over 700 billion which the NDIC assured would be recovered.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has on Monday withdrawn the operational licence of Heritage for poor performance with “no reasonable prospects of recovery, thereby making the revocation of the licence the next necessary step.”

This decision had raised questions and concerns among customers, stakeholders, and the general public.

Mr Bello said on Wednesday that preliminary investigations showed that the failed bank had about N650 billion total deposits which he said was more because there could be other deposits that were not immediately ascertained.

The NDIC MD also said the bank has a total of 2.3 million depositors. 99.9 per cent has a balance of less than N5 million deposits with the bank, while only about one per cent has deposits above N5 m.

He assured the NDIC will leverage the powers of the Act establishing it to recover the money from the debtors of the bank. “Those powers are really sufficient for us to track those debtors and recover the monies and pay the creditors.

“We want to assure depositors that there is no need to panic. They will get their money back.”

He said the NDIC will leverage BVN to identify alternate bank accounts of the depositors to pay them the insured amount up to the maximum of N5 million, while customers without alternate accounts are asked to visit the branches of the bank.

Mr Bello said the corporation will immediately commence payment of the insured amount to the depositors, while assuring that the corporation will realise all the assets both physical and online.

He said the creditors of the bank would be paid when the assets of the bank are sold. He however assured that no matter the delay, the creditors will be settled.

Bello said the uninsured deposits would only be settled after the assets, including buildings and machines are advertised and sold to recover the money to offset the uninsured sum.