WEMA Bank logo, Moruf Oseni
By Our Reporter
The report emanating from the Moruf Oseni’s led Wema Bank Plc is not a palatable one as the cost incurred on the bank litigation is on the rise.
Gathered that the financial institution has incurred over N9 billion in court cases as at December 2023.
This was revealed in the bank’s full year 2023 financial statement which was released recently.
The previous year’s litigation claims was a little above N8 billion, indicating that the bank had more legal issues to deal with in 2023.
As at September 2023, the litigations were pegged at N8.067 billion but within three months and there was an exponential increase in legal damages.
Although litigations are unavoidable in businesses but a continued increase could be dangerous for businesses due to its financial burden.
The bank’s reputation is now questionable due to the increase in litigations which could lead to loss of customers or partners.
Recall that the bank flouted seven Nigerian laws which resulted in more than N60 million fine.
When NATIONAL WAVES contacted Mabel Adeteye, Head, Brand and Marketing Communications Department of WEMA Bank to react to the development,
She said the bank came up with the amount because there were aggregate losses from its digital and collection/payment channels including third parties connected through its platforms.
Her statement reads “These were aggregate losses from our digital and collection/payment channels including 3rd parties connected through our platforms.
“The losses were from varied reasons. Some of them were due to the known challenges of electronic KYC across the nation.
“To mitigate more occurrences, amongst others, we have strengthened the fraud monitoring process, increased the staffing and capacity in the digital compliance areas, strengthened our periodic controlled negative and vulnerability penetration testing of our platforms, tightened our information security compliance processes around loans qualification, disbursement and collection, as well as our monitoring systems.
“The numbers have dropped drastically from Q4 2023 into Q1 2024 and we expect this decline to continue.
“We do not anticipate similar volumes in 2024 financial year”
