The Central Bank of Nigeria has said 874 microfinance banks have licences to operate in the country.
It listed the names of the MfBs in its report titled ‘List of CBN licensed microfinance banks as at December 7, 2020’.
The CBN recently revoked the operating licences of 42 microfinance banks in the country.
According to the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, the operating licences of the 42 microfinance banks were revoked by the CBN effective November 12, 2020.
As the official liquidator of the banks whose licences were recently revoked, the NDIC said it was in the process of closing the listed banks and paying their insured depositors.
The CBN, in consideration of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic activities in 2020, revised the deadline for compliance with the minimum capital requirements for microfinance banks in Nigeria.
The banking regulator communicated this in a circular with reference number FPR/DlR/GEN/ClR/07/054 entitled ‘Re: Review of minimum capital requirements for microfinance banks in Nigeria’.
Part of the circular read, “The Central Bank of Nigeria has extended the deadlines for compliance with the revised minimum capital requirements for all categories of the MfBs by one year as follows:
“The MfBs operating in rural, unbanked and under-banked areas (Tier 2) shall meet the N35m capital threshold by April 2021 and N50m by April 2022.
“The MfBs operating in urban and high-density banked areas (Tier 1) are expected to meet the NI00m capital threshold by April 2021 and N200m by April 2022.
“State MfBs shall increase their capital to N500m by April 2021 and N1bn by April 2022. And national MFBs are expected to meet minimum capital of N3.5bn capital by April 2021 and N5bn by April 2022.”
Before the apex bank commenced the recapitalisation of the microfinance institutions in 2018, the minimum capital base for national microfinance banks was N2bn; state microfinance banks had N100m; while the unit microfinance banks had a minimum capital requirement of N20m.
