Thirteen days after Heritage Bank dismissed rumours about an alleged ₦49 billion fraud, customers are still struggling to access their funds, and many may be ditching the bank’s services for alternatives. 

Nigeria’s Heritage Bank has asked its customers to be patient and calm regarding the current difficulties they are  experiencing with withdrawing their funds from the bank. 

According to Ozena Utulu, the bank’s corporate communications manager, Heritage Bank is undergoing a series of upgrades, a situation that has already been communicated to customers in an email, which she shared with TechCabal. “Before now, we have told them about upgrades we are running. We are communicating to our customers via email, and even on our social media, on updates we are carrying out,” she said on a phone call. 

Unsatisfied banking customers

But the bank’s customers are not satisfied with these explanations. 

An Abuja-based broadcast journalist, Leah Katung-Babatunde, told TechCabal that all through last week, the bank refused to dispense cash, and even after she opted for a digital transfer of her funds, that took longer than expected. She has now decided to move her money to another bank in small amounts, even though she didn’t state where. 

Rumour has it that a member of Heritage Bank’s information technology team is behind the  ₦49 billion fraud, but the bank has denied this.

A customer, Esther Onwubuya, is inclined to think that there is some truth to the rumours. She spent three days last week trying to withdraw funds from her father’s pension from the bank. “One thing I am sure of is, their statement  [posted online and their social media accounts] is a lie. Their head of IT stole the money and they have blocked all channels to remove funds from the bank to other banks,” she told TechCabal. Onwubuya further shared that the bank’s daily withdrawal limit keeps getting reduced.  “It was ₦20,000 and then it became ₦10,000, so you can’t remove all your money. The only way to move your money is with a current cheque transfer to a beneficiary bank, and that’s only for current accounts,” she said.

Onwubuya got her money after appealing to the bank officials to consider her sick father’s condition. “Due to my dad’s health issues, they pitied us and we had to do two over-the-counter withdrawals at two different branches,” she told TechCabal. 

Ifeoma, the daughter of a customer, who spoke to TechCabal, said  that her mother was not so successful when she approached one of Heritage Bank’s branches in Sango-Ota, Ogun state, to withdraw money. “My mum went to the bank on Tuesday [last week] to withdraw because she doesn’t have an ATM card, and she was told there was no internet network to withdraw. They asked her to come back the following day. She went back and was told that there’s still no network,” Ifeoma complained. 

But that was not all. Further inquiry revealed that the money Ifeoma’s mother had in the bank did not tally with what she had saved. She asked for her bank statements, but the bank officials could not provide it. 

Growing distrust amongst customers 

A Twitter user by name, Okoro Chinyere, has threatened to sue the bank. “I’ll be taking legal action against @heritagebankplc. The damage is enormous,” he tweeted on the morning of June 23, 2023. 

Other customers may not be keen to take legal steps, but some have decided to move on from the bank. Katung-Babatunde said she has had to resort to causing a scene at the bank while issuing threats, just to get access to her funds. She and Onwubuya confirmed that many customers may have begun to move their funds from the bank. “We are starting the process of transferring the pension account to another bank,” she told TechCabal. “Every day we went there, people were agitated,” she added.

Speaking in Heritage Bank’s defence, Utulu responded that service downtimes are a common phenomenon within the sector. “Customers are aware of the upgrades. We are just trying [our best].”