Joseph Inokotong, Abuja
In its pursuit of enhanced access to finance by businesses, the National Collateral Registry (NCR), has attracted over 600 financial institutions that are now leveraging its infrastructure to advance credits to individuals and businesses.
The NCR has also contributed to Nigeria’s upward ranking in the World Bank rating on Ease of Doing Business Report by 24 points from 169th in 2017 to 145th in 2018 out of 190 countries.
This was disclosed by the Registrar of NCR, Mainasara Mohammed, at the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN) Forum in Abuja.
“Specifically, the ‘getting credit ranking’ improved from 32nd to 6th position while the country is being adjudged as one of the 10 most improved economies”, said Mohammed.
The National Collateral Registry (NCR) is a databank where security interests in moveable assets are registered for the purpose of being used as collateral to obtain facilities from financial institutions; a financial infrastructure for Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSME) lending as it serves as a notice based registry for collaterals.
The NCR allows borrowers to prove their creditworthiness and lenders to assess their priority interest in potential claims against particular collateral.
According to Mr. Mohammed, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) established the NCR to improve access to finance, particularly for MSMEs and ultimately reduce the risks associated with MSME lending.
He disclosed that the NCR solution has been successfully migrated to the cloud to ensure stability of the website for easy accessibility by financial institutions and the general public, in addition to the established collaboration with Financial Institution Training Centre (FITC) to continually build the capacity of financial institutions in moveable asset financing.