In Nigeria’s banking culture, the current account referee form has long behaved like an heirloom—handed down from a bygone era of cheque books, personal trust, and paper-based banking. Anyone who operates a current account has likely been asked by their account officer to “stand as a referee” for someone they barely know, often as a favour and sometimes with no real connection to the individual seeking the account. It is a ritual that once served a purpose but now survives mostly because it has always existed.
Historically, the referee system was born from the prudential framework under the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act. In the days when financial records were kept in metal cabinets and customer risk assessments relied heavily on staff intuition, banks needed some assurance that the person opening a current account was credible, traceable, and unlikely to disappear after issuing a bad cheque. A referee acted as a human guarantee—someone the bank could contact if transactions went wrong. In a country where reliable physical addresses, verifiable identity records, and digital footprints were scarce, it was a sensible patch over a structural gap.
That context no longer exists. Nigeria has spent the past decade building one of Africa’s most advanced digital identity ecosystems. The Bank Verification Number (BVN) creates a unified identity for banking customers and builds behavioural history across institutions. The National Identification Number (NIN) embeds biometric and demographic data that is significantly more accurate than any handwritten endorsement. SIM registration connects verified identities to mobile numbers used in mobile banking, while the Corporate Affairs Commission now provides transparent digital records on directors and beneficial ownership of companies.
By the time a customer seeks to open a current account today, they almost always have a savings account or corporate profile with a structured transaction history. Their financial identity is not theoretical—it is visible. Digital banks and traditional institutions now rely on automated risk scoring, real-time fraud detection, geolocation intelligence, improved credit reporting, and address verification tools. These systems outperform paper references by offering meaningful insights rather than relying on social trust.
Open banking is transforming the equation even further. With consent, banks can view transaction patterns, account histories and cash flow behaviour across the ecosystem, enabling risk decisions based on data rather than personal endorsements. Against this backdrop, the referee form feels less like a safeguard and more like an outdated obstacle left behind by a paper-first regulatory mindset.
The requirement is not just obsolete; it has become a barrier. Nigerians in the diaspora—who maintain local investments, pensions, and property—struggle to satisfy a rule designed for a world where referees lived within driving distance. Foreign investors encounter a rule almost unheard of in comparable markets, signalling bureaucratic friction at a time Nigeria is actively seeking capital. Pension administrators serving non-resident contributors face the same bottleneck, and multinational firms opening accounts waste time chasing signatures despite having verifiable corporate identities through global systems and CAC’s digital database.
Meanwhile, digital-first banks operating without the referee model have proven the point: account onboarding can be secure without manual references. They use the tools the Central Bank itself mandated and continue to refine—BVN, NIN, stronger address mapping, open banking, improved credit reporting, and real-time monitoring. These tools reduce fraud far more effectively than a signature from an acquaintance with no liability.
Global practice reinforces this logic. Mature markets—whether in the UK, the United States, South Africa, Singapore, or the UAE—do not use referees for current account onboarding. Their controls rest on digital verification, compliance checks, transactional analytics, and automated risk engines. Nigeria now has these same capabilities, and its regulatory framework has evolved to support them.
The referee model mattered when the country lacked reliable identity systems. Today, it duplicates what technology already solves with greater precision. If a bank can confirm who a customer is, where they live, and how they transact, then collecting signatures from two acquaintances adds administrative noise rather than genuine protection.
As Nigeria pushes for deeper financial inclusion, easier diaspora participation, and a more attractive investment environment, phasing out the referee requirement is not only rational—it is overdue. The CBN created the digital infrastructure that makes the rule unnecessary. The next logical step is to retire a legacy practice and let modern verification systems perform the role referees once played.
Emmanuel Bassey is a Financial Expert that has worked in the Banking and Finance Industry for over 15+ years across different banks in Nigeria
