In what appears as a likely collision between between Fidelity Bank and the Nigerian Data Protection Commission, (NDPC), the lender has rebuffed the fine imposed by the regulator, insisting that no data was breached to warrant such a fine.
With 14 days ultimatum, NDPC had on Wednesday imposed a hefty fine of N555.8 million on the bank for violating its customers’ data privacy.
This was announced by Vincent Olatunji, NDPC’s national commissioner, who revealed that the bank had breached
the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) of 2019 and the Nigeria Data Protection (NDP) Act of 2023, adding that the fine, which amounts to 0.1 percent of the bank’s annual gross revenue for 2023, is the largest ever issued by the NDPC.
Olatunji explained that the penalty was aggravated due to the bank’s lack of cooperation and dismissive attitude during the investigation.
“Since we began enforcing data protection regulations, this is the most significant penalty we’ve issued,” Olatunji stated. “Fidelity Bank’s violations were serious, and despite working with them since April 2023 to address these issues, their arrogance ultimately led us to impose the full penalty.”
However, in a statement on Wednesday, a spokesman for the bank, Meksley Nwagboh, said no data law was violated to warrant the imposition of a N555.8m by the commission.
The bank said it conducted itself to the highest ethical standards by ensuring full compliance with extant laws on data protection.
“As a Bank, we remain in discussions with the NDPC over an amicable resolution to this matter,” Nwagboh said in a statement.
Fidelity Bank gave a breakdown of its dealings with the NDPC on the matter thus:
“On April 30th, 2023, we received a notice of investigation from the Nigerian Data Protection Agency (NDPA), now the Nigerian Data Protection Commission (NDPC). The investigation was in respect of a complaint from [name has been withheld to protect the identity of the complainant] who claimed that [name withheld] details were used to open an account in the bank without [name withheld] consent.
“Based on this notice, we conducted an internal investigation into the circumstances around the claim and discovered as follows:
o An account opening request was received online in the name of [name withheld], and an email was sent to the email address attached to the request informing them about this.
“In compliance with our Data Protection policy, accounts created online without full documentation are not allowed to be operational and are closed after 30 days if the outstanding documents are not provided to authenticate the identity of the person seeking to open the account.
“In compliance with our data protection laws, the account was not allowed to be operational as the passport photograph and BVN were not provided.
“The account was immediately placed on “Post No Debit” status as the applicant was expected to complete the account opening process by providing the outstanding documents for verification within 30 days. This was not done, and the account was eventually closed.
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“On May 2nd 2023, we responded to the NDPC that the bank did not violate any law because there was no data breach and that the account opening process was not completed. On our part, we carried out due diligence by immediately blocking the account and subsequently closing the account when we did not receive the outstanding documents.
“At no point in the process was the account ever operational.
“On July 7th, 2023, we were invited for a Pre-Action meeting with NDPC. During the meeting, we restated our position as earlier communicated to them in our letter dated May 2nd.
“However, despite our explanation and evidence provided to support our claim, the agency informed us that they had reached a conclusion to impose a penalty on the bank.
“On 5th December of 2023, we got a letter from NDPC demanding we pay a ‘remedial fee’ of N250 million within 21 days.
“We immediately commenced another round of engagements with the Commission as we were convinced, we had not breached any extant law or regulation.
“While discussions were still ongoing with the NDPC, we received another letter on the 20th of August demanding that we now pay N555.8m naira, he said.