The total assets of the 24 Deposit Money Banks in the country have increased in value to N18.47tn, according to latest statistics from the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation.The total assets of the banks, which stood at N17.97tn as at December 31, 2010, rose by N500bn or 2.78 per cent to N18.47tn as at September 2011.A banks total asset is the sum of its current and long-term assets. It includes cash and other items of value that can be converted into cash.According to the NDIC data, there are 44,218,930 million depositors in the 24 banks with a total of N12.15tn deposits.The document also revealed that the 24 banks had 5,204 branches and 76,374 employees as at September 31, 2011.Similarly, the total assets of the 868 microfinance banks operating in the country dropped to N154.34bn as at June 2011, compared to the N178.52bn recorded in 2010.The MFBs controlled a total number of N68.60bn deposits from 1,541,468 depositors as at June. Of the total deposits, N51.45bn was insured by the NDIC. The total loans in the sub-sector stood at N48.15bn by 246,258 borrowers. The Managing Director, NDIC, Mr. Umaru Ibrahim, said one of the reasons the bridge bank mechanism was adopted by the regulators was to safeguard the nationalised banks total deposit liabilities of over N809.4bn."Also, we had to take that decision to preserve and sustain daily operations of the failed banks and to prevent the systemic repercussions of the failure of the banks on the entire financial system, thereby ensuring financial and macro-economic stability," he said.Ibrahim also said that the Central Bank of Nigeria revoked the operating licences of 103 microfinance banks because the target examination carried out by the apex bank and NDIC revealed that the MFBs were terminally distressed.He said, "As at July 2011, the corporation had paid an aggregate sum of N2.024bn to about 69,000 depositors of the closed MFBs."The NDIC boss pointed out that the corporation, in collaboration with the CBN, was developing a framework for resolving problems of systemically important financial institutions such that the use of public funds for their resolution would be minimised."The framework involves requirement for such systematically important financial institutions to develop the resolution framework, which should include setting aside an amount on an annual basis to take care of their resolution when such occurs and the requirement for maintaining larger capital by the institutions to serve as buffer to enhance their resilience to shocks," he added.The Deputy Governor, Financial Systems Stability, CBN, Mr. Kingsley Moghalu, had said while announcing the revocation of the licences of the MFBs, "A significant number of the MFBs were deficient in their understanding of the microfinance concept and the methodology for delivery of microfinance services to the target groups."
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