‘Lack of compliance with governance best practices hindering devt

The Association of Chief Compliance Officers of Banks in Nigeria (ACCOBIN) has blamed the slow speed of corporate governance on a lack of compliance with best practices.

The group said any administration that would succeed in Nigeria must embrace compliance with governance best practices and demonstrate the political will to fight money laundering, terrorism, terrorist financing and financial crimes.

Managing Director, DataPro Limited, Abimbola Adeseyoju, said this during the May edition of the ACCOBIN stakeholders meeting in Lagos. Adeseyoju, who spoke as the host, said if the listed challenges were tackled, there would be a reversal of the declining economic, political and social status of the country.

He called for stronger collaboration among deposit money banks, law enforcement and regulatory bodies to combat financial crimes. He said with the era of open banking, fintech and other digital platforms, collaboration was important as fighting financial crimes could not be done in silos. Adeseyoju said the power of partnership in financial crime compliance would improve the compliance level and crime prevention.

“The less we collaborate and partner among ourselves in fighting financial crimes, the better for the criminals who will continue to exploit the gaps. My take is that we start building meaningful partnerships with each other within the banking industry. We also must partner with law enforcement agencies, as well as the supervisory and regulatory bodies.

There must be mutual respect and everything has to be documented,” he said. He said it was not accidental that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, recommended two frontiers of collaboration – cooperation and co-ordination – as key pillars for fighting money laundering, terrorist and proliferation financing globally. He urged ACCOBIN to consider working with other associations and regulators in non-bank financial institutions.