BVN will work the consumer credit magic

I really don’t envy the folks at CBN. They have the dirty task of making FOREX stable, keep Naira from running around like a kid with ADHD, regulate banks and bankers (two very different things) and come up with the miracle of financial inclusion. Don’t ask me when the last would happen or if it would ever happen. I’m not a miracle worker!

Expanding the financial market and the economy has been a major headache to every CBN governor since my grandfather was born. Even years since he died nobody has been able to fix this. It is no brainer, extend credit and the economy would boom. Everyone needs it – big companies, small companies, average Joe and BOP.

Without credit, there won’t be middle class, or that’s what economists said. But even the dullest Nigerian bankers know you are in soup if you dunk out loans like Father Christmas. For most borrowers, that would be the last time you would ever see their faces, or maybe even their backs.

The problem? No decent ways of identity. Almost everything in Nigeria can be forged. That shouldn’t surprise me because even at a personal level, I haven’t met any authentic woman – fake hair, fake lashes, fake colors, fake height, face hood, fake trunk, fake accent (country jumping!), as in, fake every damn thing you could imagine. Knowing they can’t be caught, borrowers have used every fake documents you could imagine.

The truth is, most borrowers are clean but the few bad ones muddy the water up for everyone. But then one bad loan is enough to wipe out all the income from the good ones. You won’t blame bankers to tread like they are in a field of black mambas.

We tried to bring credit bureau into the mix, no dice!

So bankers wised up and cooked up BVN, a proper child of necessity. Bankers need to give out loans, especially when CRR is now taller than the Burj Khalifa, because bankers can only (I mean only, when banking is done properly) make money from loans. With fewer loans there is a massive pressure on banks by shareholders to still dole out dividends, loans or no loans. To make a bad case worse, most banks have institutional investors on boards or as major shareholders and trust me, those guys don’t give out love! Portfolio performance is the only song in their albums.

So what will this BVN do? Or what’s BVN to start with?

BVN is Bank Verification Number – a type of unique identity for financial customers and you have to provide it to all your banks. It is a biometric identification system and short of cutting off your fingers at Oko Oba Abattoir, there is no hiding place. Come 2015, you can’t do any banking without your BVN.

What are the implications? Simply nowhere to hide. If you owe bank A money, with your BVN, they will track you to Bank X and collect with tulasi. If you do fraud and your BVN is blacklisted, you won’t be able to open accounts anywhere else again. Just try and explain to your new employer why you want to be collecting your salary in cash.

So when there is tidiness on identity, what happens next? Forget about all the fancy benefits on BVN website, the reality is, Bankers will know you and short of dying or running away to the USA, they will find you.
The interesting thing is that if banks know you, they will probably give you loads and loads of loans. Woe betide you if you default. Say a warm–bear-hug hello to auto-loans, mortgages, asset finance, etc. Educational loan may still be dicey, what if you got a 3rd class?

More loans means consumer companies will sell more goods. More sales means more tax revenue for Fashola, Jonathan and my cousin, a local government chairman.

I suspect non-banks will now latch on to the BVN thingy – embassies will demand it; it must match the statement you bring. And if you owe your bankers money and embassy comes calling, you ain’t going no where!

Telcos will now give you postpaid line, don’t worry just default. They will meet you at Conakry. Credit Bureau will be happy. I mean very happy.
One fall out of the BVN driving the credit thingy – there would be more cars on the road and worse traffic. So either I move house, wake up earlier or get a consumer credit to buy a chopper. Lord have mercy!

Hacking your way into the company of gods

Lucy was a thoroughly shitty movie. It was so bad I was physically restrained at the cinemas from crawling into the screen and giving everyone an uppercut; not even Scarlett Johansson could distract me.

Ok, that wasn’t possible but my-my, I wish I could.

The deeper narrative wasn’t lost on me, though – humanity has forever daydreamed about making itself better, go above the laws of physics, and just become a nuisance to the neighbors. Maybe that’s why we invented religion. That’s another story entirely.

Let’s be frank; we have tried – we have flown five times faster than the speed of a crying baby’s wail, gone to the moon and back, we have smartphones, and oh, Nigeria even dealt with Ebola! But we are still unsatisfied. We want to be gods!

Meanwhile, I sat here at my desk wondering how my dull day would end and then bumped into an interesting article at The Verge. Not the usual place the normal guys crawl, but that’s my joint.

It’s estimated that about 100,000 unlucky souls today are plumbed with electrical impulses to fight pain and depression (you could have Bovi come around to make you forget your sorry life for half the price of the surgery). However, what if we go beyond making a sad man laugh and decide to augment our mental abilities? What if a consistent set of interfaces and protocols come into play that would allow us to tweak memory, maturity, reactions, or maybe someone would be able to reverse intelligence and give some of the dull people I know a bit of smart for a try?

It is scary to think about the significance of this. At first, I was an advocate of enhancing our body with bionic parts – smart eyes that can read the news and all that sh*t and ears that could discern gist from a mile off. This is bigger; this is godliness at the photonic level!

By the way, woe betides you if your brain crashes, freezes of gets Dosed by Chinese hackers.

There is a time when I wanted tech advancement just for the sake of it, but for the first time, I’m scared out of my pink boxers and afraid of what humans could do to humanity. Let me be out of here before Putin gets this done.

Time for the long drive home; where are my car keys? Damn, I need a brain implant.

Nothing Good Lasts Forever

When I moved to the Android world the first thing I kicked off was the inglorious Samsung keyboard for Swiftkey. It felt so good.

Like everything that looks too good to be true it didn’t allow me to enjoy it too long. It started dragging my phone badly with typed messages taking seconds to appear. Sometimes as long as 5 seconds.
 
I haven’t been known for patience so I promptly kicked its butt out for something more in use but less popular. Google Keyboard.
So far its working like charm but let’s see how long that lasts before I hit the divorce courts.
 
 

Enough said

I recently bumped into this article which got me thinking: http://qz.com/254477/its-time-to-accept-this-fact-a-really-great-marriage-is-rare/

I know quite a lot of people would eagerly love to use me for target practice but then taking the risk, I could just ask – is marriage an evolutionary con that’s gonna bottom out some day?

For all we know, I could be very wrong. After all, I have been wrong about so many things.

MTN and Etisalat vs Me

I ported from MTN to Etisalat about a month ago. That isn’t news.

I’m naturally a loyal person – I could have broken a few hearts but it’s nothing personal just business. After all I have been using same drycleaner all my professional life and the thought of dumping them, even when I moved to the other side of town, is painful.

But MTN had it coming – the data service doesn’t work well. Voice is trashy; and then they started stealing my money. It got so bad they could have done better if they robbed me at gunpoint in daylight or nighttime depending on what’s convenient, not for me, but for them.

So on a bright Saturday afternoon, my daughter playing the dutiful sidekick, we marched down to Etisalat and got the freaking phone ported.

It felt good.
Only for a while.

You see, Etisalat works but they are darn expensive. How I managed to go through double what I used to pay monthly at MTN (less the robbery) still baffles me. Also the data varnishes so fast I turned my phone bottom up to see if it’s leaking data. At least that should have formed a puddle, somewhere.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, an evil thought is forming though. I could get a dual SIM phone and use an Etisalat for the data and MTN for the voice but the thought of porting back isn’t pleasant. You see, I have some little imps working in my office who are going to jeer on toadstools if I dare port back to MTN. I’m sure those guys are getting paid to make my life miserable. That’s an aside.