Fidelity Bank has been charged by the National Data Protection Commission (NDPC) with a total sum of N555.8m for infractions that led to breaching its customers’ data.
A National Commissioner of the Commission, Vincent Olatunji, announced this at the Validation Workshop on the Nigeria Data Protection Act General Application and Implementation Directive on Wednesday, August 21, 2024, in Abuja.
According to him, the tier one bank was convicted of violating the NDP Act, 2023, and the NDPR, 2019 by breaching data, and was fined 0.1% of the Bank’s annual gross revenue in 2023.
According to the CEO, the bank’s arrogance and poor cooperation during its investigation contributed to the highest fine to be issued by the commission.
Olatunji said, “Data protection compliance is important and we have stated that non-compliance will be punished. We have penalties that range from N10m or up to two per cent of gross earnings for the previous year.
“But our approach has been creating awareness and letting people know what we are supposed to be doing and most of the breaches we try to look at the level of breach, impact, and the number of data subjects affected and the level of cooperation by the organization involved on the remuneration fee.
According to Olatunji, since the commission started, the major penalty it issued was yesterday (Tuesday) on fidelity bank which is for the violation of the NDP Act, 2023, and the NDPR, 2019. He noted that the commission issued a fine of N555.8m and the bank has to pay.
“Since we started, the major penalty we issued was yesterday (Tuesday) on fidelity bank. For the violation of the NDP Act, 2023, and the NDPR, 2019, we issued a fine of N555.8m and they "have to pay. We have observed serious breaches and we have been working with them, investigating the issue since April 2023. But by the time we finalized our findings, they became arrogant and we decided to issue a full penalty on them which is about 0.1 per cent of their earnings for 2023.
“This is to be paid within 14 days upon the receipt of this notice,” he added.
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