Unauthorized Withdrawal from ATM/POS: Compounding Customers’ Nightmares in the Banking Sector of Nigeria (Published)
In recent times, a lot of bank customers have experienced a sudden disappearance of funds in their bank accounts and this has been a source of concern to the stakeholders in the banking sector of Nigeria. These are unauthorized transactions which occur without the consent or authorization from the customers. The unauthorized transactions may be in the form of illegal or unauthorized withdrawals by criminals or indiscriminate or multiple deductions or debits by the banks claiming to be ATM/POS transaction charges. In some cases, the entire life savings of a customer may be siphoned without any trace of the source of the illegal withdrawals. This paper examines these cases of unauthorized transactions in the accounts of bank customers and argues that appropriate steps should be taken by the banks to prevent unauthorized transactions in the customers’ accounts rather than rely an exemption clause which may not avail them when they are negligent. The paper concludes that the customers also have a role to play to guard against unauthorized withdrawals in their accounts, and recommends among others, that any customer who discovers any unauthorized transaction in his or her account should immediately report to the bank for appropriate action to be taken.
Keywords: ATM/POS, Banking Sector, Nigeria, customers’ nightmares, unauthorized withdrawal
Implementation Effect of Treasury Single Account on the Economy of Nigeria: The Perspective of Banking Sector (Published)
Treasury Single Account (TSA)’s prime purpose is to ensure accountability, improve transparency, and prevent abuse and mismanagement of public funds. Nigeria had to domesticate the law implementing TSA in 1999, however, the government ran a pilot scheme in 2012 to fully domesticate and observe the impact of such policy on the growing economy of the nation. Thus, this study aimed to examine the implications of TSA from its domestication, identify its benefits, examine the challenges and study its prospects considering the perspectives of the banking sector employees. The descriptive research design was adopted for the study using fifty (50) bank employees within Ondo State, Southwestern Nigeria who were randomly selected. Software for the Social Sciences Statistical System (SPSS) was used to obtain descriptive statistics such as central tendency, the measure of variability, kurtosis and skewness. The calculated values range from 2.60 to 3.88, 0.72 to 1.28, -0.08 to -2.20, -1.73 to 4.09 for mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis respectively. All calculated p-values range between (.000 to .003), which are less than the level of significance of 0.05 (2-tailed). Hence, the null hypotheses are rejected while the alternate hypotheses are accepted. The strong relationship of up to 0.985 between the opinions of the respondents is a strong indication that the application of TSA has led to a reduction of monetary misappropriation and a drastic reduction of corrupt practices. Therefore, TSA should be implemented in every sector of the economy both public and private to ensure financial prudence, accountability, transparencies and as a tool in monitoring, expenses incurred.
Keywords: Accountability, Banking Sector, Economy, Transparency, treasury single account
Information Systems Audit and Continuous Auditing in Turkish Capital Markets (Published)
Sustainability has become the focal concern for today’s organization. For banks, surviving in the ever-changing innovation based economy is crucial due to fast growing and highly sophisticated technology and products that take up important part in the banking system. In turn, this has made it harder to track discrepancies in the accounting system or other tools used by banks. Internal audit is an important aspect that ensures sustainability and future of internal audit relies on Continuous Auditing (CA) and Continuous Monitoring (CM) concepts.Today’s trendy social media and technology has become addictive for users and these tools are especially important for finance sector, which in turn increases technological risks. In this manner, having these risks covered in applicable legislation is paramount. Within this context, this research aims to explain the CA practices in Turkish Banking sector, how specific tools are used and pros and cons of current controls over certain processes in addition to signifying Information Systems (IS) audit and its place in Turkish legislation.
Keywords: Banking Sector, Continuous auditing, Information Systems audit, corporate sustainability
Reliance on Published Financial Statements and Investment Decision Making in the Nigeria Banking Sector (Published)
Financial Reporting Standards and Practices have in the recent past come under great criticisms, demanding that accountants take further steps in ensuring that the true and fair view of the actual worth of business are also incorporated in the financial statements published by them. This was triggered off by an unpresedented line up of corporate failures like that of Enron Corporation, World.com and others coupled with the emergence of the global economic crisis. In Nigeria also, corporate failures and distresses have been witnessed in the banking sector. Evidence was the huge collapse of the Cooperative and Commerce Bank (CCB), Orient Bank of Nigeria, African Continental Bank (ACB) all due to massive accounting related frauds. This problem resulted in the establishment of Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) to prevent corporate failures particularly in the Nigeria banking sector by acquiring and financially distress companies. This paper is a critical investigation on the degree of reliance of the published financial statements by corporate investors. The study employed survey research design by which data were generated by means of questionnaire administered on one hundred and fifty corporate investors and senior management officials of the selected banks. The descriptive statistics and percentage analysis were used for the data analysis and the hypotheses were tested using t-test statistic. The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) software version 17.0 was employed in the analysis of data and test of hypotheses. The results reveal that one of the primary responsibility of management to the investors is to give a standardized financial statement evaluated and authenticated by a qualified auditor or financial experts (tcal (16.59) > tcritical (2.353). p < 0.05). It also showed investors do understand the financial statement well before investment decision (tcal (17.306) > tcritical (2.353). p < 0.05). The results of the analysis also indicated that investors depend heavily on the credibility of auditors/financial expert approval of financial statement in making investment decisions (tcal (4.592) > tcritical (2.353). p < 0.05) and as such published financial statement is very important in the investors’ decision making (tcal 74.500 > tcritical 6.314; p < 0.05). It hereby recommended that adequate care and due diligence should be maintained in preparing financial statements to avoid faulty investment decisions which could lead to loss of funds and possible litigations
Keywords: Banking Sector, Decision Making, Financial Statements, Investments, Nigeria
Post Merger And Acquisition And Performance Of Deposit Money Banks In Nigeria (Review Completed - Accepted)
Mergers and acquisitions as a phenomenon is implemented to strengthen the banking system, embrace globalization, improve healthy competition, exploit economies of scale, adopt advanced technologies, raise efficiency and improve profitability. The world globalization has led to world financial crisis which has significantly affected the banking industry and has consequently increased the need for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the consolidation of deposit money banks. One of the major policies introduced to solve these financial problems is by consolidation through mergers and acquisitions. This study explored the impact of post mergers and acquisitions on the performance of deposit money banks in Nigeria. The study adopted a cross sectional survey design with a total population of 22 deposit money banks in Nigeria. A sample of 10 banks was randomly selected from the above population. The study used the secondary sources to extract data from the Annual Reports of the selected banks for a period of five (5) years (2008-2012). Simple regression analysis technique was used for data analyses. The study revealed that as at the end of year 2012, the average capital base of the sampled banks in the post Merger period showed a total of (N 1.76 Trillion). This is an improvement from the recent work of Oghojafor (2012) in which average capital base stood at (N 6,358.76 Million). The study revealed an insignificant but positive relationship between post mergers and acquisitions capital base (PMACB) and dividend per share (DPS) with (P=0.985 i.e. P>0.05), earnings per share (EPS) with (P=0.803 i.e. P>0.05), return on assets (ROA) with (P=0.859 i.e. P>0.05) and return on capital employed with (P=0.666 i.e. P>0.05). This study concluded that post merger and acquisition has no significant effect on dividend per share of shareholders, their earnings per share, return on assets and return on capital employed. In a broad perspective, this study further revealed that there is a reduction in the degree of global banking crisis over the years and thus reduction in the general banking failure particularly in Nigeria. This is made possible through mergers and acquisition process which consecutively resulted in increased capital base of banking industry in Nigeria. The study recommended that equal considerations should be given to both micro and macro prudential guidelines, in order to ensure sound and stable banking system. Also, deposit money banks should incorporate into their banking policy other factors such as credit discipline, corporate culture, and management information system so as to ensure increase in their earnings ability.
Keywords: Acquisition, Banking Sector, Merger, Performance