Nigeria: FCCPC extends registration deadline for online money lenders

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has announced the extension of the deadline for the registration of online money lenders.

The FCCPC has in recent times put a lot of focus on the activities of these online lenders especially the illegal ones, over allegations of rights violations, and unfair practices, among others.

This disclosure is contained in a statement issued by the Chief Executive Officer, Babatunde Irukera in Abuja, where he noted that the deadline of 90 days expired on November 14.

FCCPC extends the deadline to January 31

Irukera said the commission considered that some online money lenders were still in the process of their registration and extended the deadline to January 31, 2023.

• The FCCPC boss said, ”On Aug. 18 in furtherance of the collaboration of the Inter-Agency Joint Task Force, the FCCPC conducted enforcement actions in Lagos with respect to certain DMLs.
• ”In view of the desire to promote fair, transparent, and beneficial alternative lending opportunities, the Joint Task Force (JTF) established a mutually adopted Limited Interim Regulatory/Registration Framework and Guidelines for Digital Lending, 2022.
• ”Subsequently, the commission commenced the registration of DMLs.
• ”By an Order and Notice of the Commission on Aug. 17, existing DMLs were required to comply in not later than 90 days to confirm their business is uninterrupted.
• ”The commission has also created a publicly accessible list of the DMLs that have been granted approvals/conditional approvals.’’

The CEO said the list of DMLs gave approval would be updated regularly and could be accessed here

For the records

• Recall that on March 11, the Federal Government in a raid through its joint committee investigating rights violations and unfair practices shut down some illegal online money-lending banks for not registering with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and engaging in activities against the rights of Nigerian consumers.
• These online banks charged interest rates that violate the ethics of how lending is done and was involved in naming and shaming which is a violation of people’s privacy with respect to how these lenders recover loans, among other violations.

The FCCPC recently released a limited interim regulatory and registration framework for digital lending as they worked on a more comprehensive framework to guide the operations of digital lenders in Nigeria. The Commission created a registration form to be completed and submitted by those operating in the digital lending industry.

The 2 major issues the FCCPC sought to address with this framework are unethical interest rates and violation of consumer privacy and other unethical lending practices perpetrated by unchecked digital lenders.