First Bank: Theft Of Customer’s Deposit Surges

Bank’s Reputational Risk Impact, RRI Worsens

On Tuesday September 3, around 1pm, a First Bank Customers’ representative was very busy attending to customers who wanted to open a new bank account at the bank’s Abule- Egba/ U-turn bus stop along the Lagos Abeokuta expressway.

The lady, fair and lanky, stood out in the smart, swift manner she attended to customers.

From their looks, all the customers she attended to that day were very impressed by her manners, except that she didn’t put on her name tag for proper identification.

Bank’s Staff Don’t Put On Tags For Identification

The magazine also observed that other staff who attended to customers at the branch on that sunny afternoon did not put on name tags.

“She’s one of the best staff in this bank because she makes us happy the way she attends to us,” an elderly woman said.

Analysts insist that the bank has been making customers happy since it started commercial business in Nigeria in 1894.

Ibukun Adesokan And Others Are Directors

This has turned out a blessing for the commercial bank which has reputable Nigerians such as Ibukun Awosika as chairman of its board of directors.

Other members of the bank’s board are Dr Adesola Kazeem Adeduntan (managing director and chief executive), Francis Gbenga, Abdullahi Ibrahim and Dr Remi Oni.

Also on the board are Mrs Olusola .O.Owuru, a former commissioner in Lagos state, Dr(mrs) Ijeoma E. Jidenma, Ibrahim Dahiru Waziri among others.

Over 800 Branches Across Nigeria

According to Wikipedia First bank “specialises in retail banking and has the largest retail client base in Nigeria.

The banks has a total assets‎ of ‎N4,514,789,000,000, number of employees ‎7,616 and over 800 branches and N294, 284,000,000 operating income.

Customers Narrate Bitter Experience

“If you are above 65 years, there’s the possibility that you have been a customer of First Bank at a point in your life. It used to be one of the best banks in the country,” Seye Adebukola, a financial expert told the magazine in Lagos on Tuesday.

That was until the bank started suffering from some corporate governance issues bordering on theft of customer’s deposit and other fraudulent practices, other analysts say.

“In many instances, the involvement of senior employees of the bank in some of these incidents has come as a shock to many Nigerians whose only reason for banking with First Bank is its reputation as the oldest bank in the country,” Chidi Innocent, a risk analyst said.

That’s exactly the belief of Ugwu Ezekiel Chukwuma when he decided to open an account with First Bank whose slogan “You First” resonates with the unique services it rendered in those days when new generation banks were yet to debut in the country.

“To live our promise of ‘YOU First‘, we design products and services to support your personal, family and business needs,” the bank said on its website.

“There was never a bank with so much trust among customers that when you put your money in First Bank in those days you can go home and sleep,” Pa Jide Abraham, a  75 year old retired civil servant told the magazine.

Everything has now changed suddenly as Ezekiel would later discover.

He had opened a bank account with First Bank, based on the advice of his friends and started depositing money from his business with the intention of growing the saving for future to expansion and possibly takes care of other pressing needs.

At least, that’s what he thought when he opened a bank account no 3030674966 with the bank’s NIJ House, Adeyemo Alakija Street, Victorial Island branch.

But he didn’t envisage that some employees of the bank have other intentions.

At the point of opening the account he demanded “for an alert system either by means of an e-mail or Short Message Service, SMS on transactions on his account” so that he could monitor daily transactions of the account, but the bank told him” none was available at the time,” Ikechukwu Owodi, his lawyer said in a letter he wrote to the bank on his client’s behalf.

Whatever the reasons for not making these windows available for Chukwuma, to enable him keep tab on his account is only known to the bank, but what happened not long after he started operating the account raised some very serious posers.

Within a few weeks of opening the account, he started noticing that money was systematically being withdrawn from his account.

Initially, he thought it was a mistake that will be corrected with time. But that never happened. Within few days, close to five hundred thousand naira has been withdrawn without his authorization.

At this point, he reported the matter to the bank which refused to help resolve the matter.

Chukwuma then contacted his lawyer who took the matter up by writing a letter to the bank demanding that his client be refunded the exact amount “stolen’ from his account.

“The essence of this letter” his lawyer stated “is to finally demand that your bank refunds the sum of N474, 300.00(four hundred and seventy –four thousand three hundred naira) being the total sum of money stolen from our client’s account in your bank without further delay by forwarding your check drawn in favour of Ugwu Ezekiel Chukwuma to us.” The letter was addressed to the managing director of the bank.

All effort to get the money back has been frustrated by First Bank management.

His lawyer told the magazine last week that the bank set all manners of obstacles on their part to recover the stolen money.

At a point, he said, his client was so frustrated that he was no longer interested in recovering his hard earned money stolen from his account.

That seems to be the lots of other customers who may have gone through some bitter experience with the Adesola Kazeem Adeduntan led bank.

One customer at the Allen Avenue branch of First Bank, told the magazine on Wednesday that there was a time he noticed that huge sums have been withdrawn from her account without her approval.

It took “sweat and blood before they agreed to return the money,” she narrated.

“When I complained to my account manager, he told me to write a letter which I did. Initially, they accused me of compromising my PIN and other details of my account. But they later realized that it was an in-house fraud.

In spite of this, we were on the matter for several weeks before they finally returned my money,” the customer who did not want her name mentioned because of “personal reasons” told The Source.

Depositors Dump Bank For Competitors

Others have not been so lucky. Obi Nwagwu, a freight forwarder told the magazine in Apapa last week that he operated a current account with the bank for over 15 years until three years ago when he finally closed the account “when I discovered that money was being moved from my account. I later discover that the job was done by some workers of the bank,” Nwagwu said.

“When I complained, I was told that i would be refunded. They never did. At a point, I decided to move my account to another bank,” he said.

Analysts Worry Over Insiders Involvement

Analysts say the bank has one of the worst Reputational Risk Impact, RRI among the banks in the country.

“From number one position as the bank with the best reputation in the country, in terms of customers’ confidence that they can go home and sleep whenever they keep their money with the bank, recent cases of incessant theft of customers’ deposit had damaged its image,” according to Abdulrazak Ayeye, a forensic fraud analyst in Lagos.

He however explained that the development is not peculiar to the bank, except that other banks have been building “firewalls that are capable of preventing fraud in their banks. May be the management of First Bank should begin to invest in this area,” he said.

Apart from this, he stated that the bank should make sure that any employee caught in the act of stealing money from customers’ account must not be covered by the management, rather they should be handed over to “EFCC for prosecution after they have been exposed and disciplined to serve as deterrence to others,” he said.

That seems not to be the case with First Bank who has a growing reputation for failure to expose any of its employees involved theft and fraud, analysts say.

“Once beaten, twice shy, I have had a sad experience with the bank since then, I never want to have anything to do with them again,” said a customer, who added that the bank’s services are slow “ the only thing that draw you to the bank is trust. But they seem to have lost their Unique selling Proposition,” he said.

He explained that his friends and relations who he shared his ordeal with where somehow disappointed and now some of them are planning to withdraw their account, while others said they will never have anything to do with First Bank.

From number one position years ago, First Bank has slipped to number three, behind Zenith and GT Bank.

“Customers’ perception of a bank matters a lot. Whenever a customer decides to leave a particular bank, it’s a plus for the new one he has moved to. This will likely affect the fortune of the bank no matter how insignificant the customer,” Nwagwu said.

NDIC Report Queries Managers, Supervisors Involvement

His advice came on the crest of recent reports by the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation, NDIC, that banks in the country have formed the habits of covering employees accused of fraudulent practices.

In its report, the NDIC said over N15.15 bn was stolen from customers’ accounts in 2018 alone in a racket involving top managers and supervisors of various banks in the country.

The regulatory body in the report also stated that there’s significant rise in the number of bank’s employees involved in the racket as the number rose from 320 in 2017 to 899 in 2018.

The magazine reached out to Ismail Omamegbe, the bank’s head, Media and External Relations to get his response on the issues. He promised to get back to the magazine.

He never did. The image maker did not also respond to text messages later sent to his telephone line.