NDIC Set To Pay Depositors Of Heritage Bank PLC

By Linda Ike

The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, NDIC has assured to start payment to depositors of Heritage Bank PLC.

Managing Director of NDIC, Bello Hassan who gave the assurance on Wednesday at a press conference in Abuja, urged the depositors not to panic as their money will be paid to them

He further assured that the corporation will not wait for the one month as stipulated by law, but rather will start payment to depositors within one week before moving to settle the creditors.
He noted that the depositors of the liquidated Heritage Bank PLC are N2.3 million with a total deposit of N650 billion while the loans are close to N100 billion, insisting that the loans will be recovered.

NDIC Boss said depositors of the bank that have alternate accounts within the industry will be paid up to the insured amount of N5 million per depositor, using their Bank Verification Number (BVN) to locate their alternate accounts.

“We are going to start payment with depositors before we move to creditors. So, for depositors, we are lucky to have a BVN facility, so we are leveraging on it to identify an alternate number of those depositors, so the depositors that have alternate accounts in the system, don’t need to visit any branch of the bank, we are aware of their details, we pay them the insured account, up to the maximum limit of N5 million. But for the depositors that have only an account with the liquidated bank, they have to visit any nearest branch so that they can be identified by the server of the bank, if they are not ready to do that, they can do it online, by visiting the website of the NDIC,” he stated.

Hassan disclosed that NDIC has deployed its 400 staff to about 116 branches of the Heritage Bank to take charge of the assets and records of the bank.
According to him, this is to determine the claimers of the bank and promote stability.