A staff member of Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH) has accused First City Monument Bank (FCMB) of refusing to clear an additional N800,000 it forced on a loan he took, despite admitting the addition was an error.
The staff member, who wishes to remain anonymous, told FIJ that he had written to the bank through his lawyer and had visited multiple branches since 2021, but the bank has failed to resolve the issue.
He said that after opening an account with FCMB in 2012, he took a loan and repaid between N41,000 and N65,000 monthly until August 2017, when he took a top-up loan of N750,000 and another N200,000 in 2019. According to the YABATECH employee, this was when the problem began.
He discovered discrepancies in his loan account in 2021, when his balance suddenly jumped from about N750,000 to N1.8 million, even though he had consistently paid N52,000 monthly up until that year.
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The YABATECH staff member said he visited an FCMB branch in Mushin to make inquiries when he became convinced something was wrong. A lady in charge of loans confirmed there was a problem with his account and advised him to go to the Risk Management Department at the FCMB Ikeja office.
“I went to Ikeja, but they referred me back to Mushin, saying someone named Mr Seun (who originally opened my account) was responsible. When I got back to Mushin, I was told that Mr Seun had travelled to America with his family,” he told FIJ.
“I explained the situation to another lady who cross-checked my loan history from 2012 to the present. Again, she found discrepancies and told me to return to the Ikeja office. At one point, they admitted there was a system error and promised to fix it, but they did nothing.”
He said that at some point, FCMB sent some of its staff to meet him at Yaba College of Technology for a resolution. They had meetings and promised to look into the matter, but again, nothing came of it.
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“At the Risk Management Department, I met a man who checked my loan history. He discovered that in December 2012, barely four months after I took the initial loan, they allegedly gave me another one. That’s impossible. How could I have been given a second loan in the same year, just months apart? It’s not standard practice anywhere,” he said.
“Since then, I’ve been going up and down, trying to find answers. That’s why I asked my son for advice on what to do next. Most recently, they claimed that the increase in my loan balance was due to skipped payments and the Central Bank’s multiple interest rate hikes, all done without prior notice. But this doesn’t explain where all the money I’ve been paying over the years went.”
When FIJ emailed FCMB on Friday for comments on the matter, a respondent said the customer should contact them directly.
The post FCMB Rewrote YABATECH Employee’s N950,000 Loan as N1.75m. Bank Admitted Error but Refused to Fix It appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.