BVN enrolment hits 15million mark

The nationwide enrolment of banks' Biometric Verification Numbers, BVN, has reached a landmark of 15 million customers, just as United Bank for Africa, UBA introduced a simplified process for registration.

The simplified process of registration is to  complete the exercise so  that customers who registered in other banks can link their BVN to UBA account automatically rather than going into the branch to do it physically.

Group Managing Director/CEO of  UBA, Mr. Phillips Oduoza,  who disclosed this, yesterday, said 'UBA's initiative will help give a tremendous boost to the overall success of the exercise.

'With 2.7 million registrations as at today Monday July 6, 2015, UBA is currently the leading bank in BVN registrations among banks in Nigeria. We invite all customers to take advantage of this innovation, one of many initiatives of the bank to provide convenient banking solutions and excellent service to our customers.

Commenting on the challenges that people in Diaspora are likely to face as a result of the introduction of BVN, he said 'The banking industry is working on a solution to solving the problem because without the BVN they cannot be able to do any transaction in the banking industry. Transactions such as foreign exchange, internet banking, transfers, among others, would be difficult to execute, hence the need to get them registered.'

According to him: 'BVN  is going to be another  revolution  in this country just like we had in the telecom industry.  It is a good thing for the country and the people and that is where cashless economy is taking us to. Consumer finance is what drives the development of a country and cost of doing business will go down when this commences fully.'

Meanwhile, leveraging on its robust information technology infrastructure, UBA launched a short code number *919*6# through which customers can send their BVN to automatically link their respective accounts. In his words

'The process is very simple. All a customer has to do is to send his or her valid BVN from the telephone number that was used to open their account to the short code number and it will become automatically linked their account with the bank' Mr. Rasheed Adegoke, Director, Group Information Technology, UBA Plc has stated.

The introduction of this simplified process was in response to some of the challenges associated with the ongoing BVN exercise. 'UBA has come up with this novel process to ensure that customers who already have their BVN do not have any issues submitting it to their alternate banks' explained Adegoke.

Once customers submit their BVN through the code, they will get an immediate response letting them know whether their BVN is valid or incorrect.  The responses will be accompanied by a phone number through which further enquiries can be made by the customers if required.  In addition to this phone number, customers can also reach UBA on social media though Facebook and twitter or by calling UBA's Customer Fulfilments Centre for further clarifications. Vanguard