The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria has expressed its readiness to revamp and transform its operational activities to meet the housing demands of Nigerians.
The Managing Director of the Bank, Madu Hamman, gave the commitment at its 2024 Management Retreat held on Friday in Niger State.
The retreat was themed “Transformational Innovation for Sustainable Development in Uncertain Times.”
He said the transformation was to rapidly reform and innovate towards meeting Nigeria’s housing shortfall through the delivery of affordable, decent, and quality housing to Nigerians.
The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Ahmed Dangiwa, recently scored the Federal Housing Authority and Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria low in their performance in providing houses for all segments of society.
According to Hamman, the huge housing deficit in the country, which affects millions of Nigerians, is a serious challenge that requires urgent and innovative solutions.
He said, “Housing is a basic human right and a key factor for social and economic development. The FMBN, as the apex mortgage institution in the country, has a critical role to play in addressing this challenge. The FMBN has been providing mortgage finance and facilitating homeownership for low and medium-income earners through its various schemes and products. However, these efforts are not enough to meet the growing demand for shelter and the expectations of the Nigerian people.
“Several constraints include the need to recapitalise the bank, which I am glad to say is currently receiving attention from the minister to recapitalise the bank to the tune of N500bn. Secondly, the CBN single obligor limit on our lending and the bank is resolving this with our regulators.”
He also listed the bank’s ownership structure, which the Federal Government is the single shareholder, the obsolete FMBN, NHF and Land Use Act to be part of its constraints.
He said that the bank had taken transformational innovations to create new value propositions, new business models, new markets, and new solutions that could disrupt the status quo and generate positive social impact.
He added that the bank’s digital transformation had reached 92 per cent completion stage while the add-on modules were at 87 per cent completed.
“We have been partnering with private developers, state governments, cooperatives, labour centres and other stakeholders to deliver affordable housing for Nigerians.
As part of the drive to enhance the bank’s operational effectiveness, the bank has created and approved several innovative policies that streamline the bank’s procedures and processes with international best practices that include an enterprise risk management framework, a corporate governance framework, an anti-money laundry and combating the financing of terrorism policies, environmental & social risk management framework, amongst other policies.
“Additionally, in furtherance of the bank’s mandate to provide accessible and affordable housing finance to Nigerians, the FMBN has eased the equity requirements on NHIF managing loans,” the FMBN boss enunciated.
According to Hamman, the bank also revamped its product lineup by introducing new products and services that seek to widen its customer base and cater more for its existing customers. “These new products and housing programmes include approval of the NHF individual construction loan, approval of the rent-to-own product, and revamping of the cooperative housing development loan.
“The bank has developed a five-year strategic blueprint. As a comprehensive package, the blueprint integrates some transformational innovations.
“Accordingly, permit me to enumerate a few of the innovative elements incorporated in the five-year strategic plan under the digital transformation action that includes the implementation of a central core banking platform, the articulation of system requirements for risk management software and the transitioning of internal processes (e.g. loan approval and disbursement, etc.) to digital channels and platforms to drive adoption,” Hamman added.