Insurance firms’ N300b stuck at CBN over verification for illicit funds

By Rosemary Iwunze
Insurance companies are now struggling to have access to the new capital they raised, amounting to about N300 billion under the just concluded recapitalization programme.
The funds were held in the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, pending verifications for illicit funds inflows.
Vanguard learnt that following suspicion of possible illicit sources of some of the new investments in the firms the apex imposed stricter capital verification regime, a development which has proved tough for most of the insurance firms to scale through.
It is further learnt that while the National Insurance Commission, NAICOM, has given approval for the apex bank to release the funds to th...