@iamkadirii Please ๐
Can your customer help do the needful by reporting this staff, he should just get an evidence and send to the DisCo.
This is the problem.
This is more of an ecosystem problem created by lenders, both formal and informal.
Ideally, if Lender A reports a customer for loan default to a credit bureau, that customer should not be able to walk into Lender B and obtain another loan.
The Lender B would decline the application and the customer will be asked to settle the outstanding obligation with Lender A first.
In fact some lenders intentionally don't report defaulters because they want other lenders to have a taste of loan default in their books.
The only solution to this is for CBN to fully implement and enforce Open Banking system. Open Banking infrastructure will give lenders better visibility into customer financial behaviour and significantly reduce avoidable loan defaults.
That said, I disagree with this statement:
"No history means no score. No score means no loan. No loan means no history."
A customer without a credit history can still access credit. The difference is that the lender will typically start with a conservative amount because there is no repayment track record to assess. The lender's objective is simply to observe repayment behaviour and determine whether the customer is creditworthy.
Also, customers with acceptable collateral can still access larger credit facilities even without an established credit history.
Why Nigerian credit scores don't really work
Nigeria has credit bureaus. CRC, FirstCentral, CreditRegistry.
Banks are supposed to check them before giving loans. Fintechs are supposed to report defaults to them.
In theory, if you default on a loan, it should follow you everywhere.
In practice, the system has fundamental gaps that most people don't know about.
Gap 1: Incomplete data.
Credit bureaus only know what gets reported to them. If a lender doesn't report a default and many smaller lenders don't, either out of negligence or because the integration is expensive to build it never enters the system.
You can default on 5 loans from informal lenders and walk into a bank with a clean credit report.
Gap 2: Identity fragmentation.
Nigeria's identity infrastructure is fragmented BVN, NIN, passport, driver's licence, voter's card. Not all of them talk to each other cleanly.
A credit bureau entry tied to your BVN might not match an application made with your NIN. Aliases, name variations, and address inconsistencies create gaps that determined bad actors exploit.
Gap 3: Thin files.
The majority of Nigerians who have never taken a formal loan don't exist in the credit system at all.
No history means no score. No score means no loan. No loan means no history.
It's a closed loop that locks out exactly the people financial inclusion is supposed to reach.
This is why most Nigerian digital lenders don't actually rely on credit bureau scores.
They use alternative data your airtime recharge patterns, BVN-linked account history, phone usage data, social graph analysis to build their own internal credit models.
The credit bureau exists. The infrastructure around it does not.
So Nigeria built a parallel system that works around the official one.
@Adeshola54 This isn't true.
DISCOs are encouraging the use of prepaid meters, it has a lot of benefits to the system, especially for individual customers.
The complain is usually on the pace of meter deployment when requested.
The power sector in Nigeria has a debt cycle, I mean serious debt cycle problem.
Distribution companies often do not collect enough money from customers. You may want to disagree due to the bias that you're not enjoying constant electricity at your location.
But the truth still remains that the system is faced with energy theft, by pass and customers not paying bills because they're using stolen energy.
Because of that, the Disco's cannot fully pay the generating and transmiting companies what was given to them to distribute.
When Gencos are not paid, they can't generate enough due to product shortages.
When discos can't collect enough money from energy usage they cannot maintain infrastructure or enhance the system.
I'm not making excuses, but this is one of the problems the sector is facing.
@Kaothaj Once you notice any illegal connection, you report to your network DisCo via their social media platforms. They'll take it up from there.
Energy theft is a crime.
Yeah...
DisCos are adopting smart metering across board, this is a solution mechanism to mitigate LOR but it doesn't stop there.
Monitoring too is been deployed by various DisCos to check mate Energy theft and bypass.
Defaulters will get persecuted even after paying for the stolen energy.
The moment I clock a year in a company, I start applying for other jobs.
It does not necessarily mean I want to leave. I do it to test the market and confirm that my skills are still relevant and in demand.
That way, when I eventually decide to move on, I know I'm market fit.
Don't be desperate to leave a company.
When you're desperate, every delay feels like a setback and every rejection feels personal.
If your target is to leave a company in September, your job search should not begin in September.
It should begin now.
Last month I wrote about the misconception on non-interest banking in Nigeria and how we miss out on the good products they have that supports individuals and SMEs.
AltBank and Lotus Bank provided an insight on what they're doing to educate the public on the benefits of ethical banking.
On Monday, a non-interest Bank reached out that they need Sales Talents in their Lagos branches.
The grade level vacancies is for ABO, BO, SBO and DM
You can apply if you want to make the switch... Link is in the comment section.