Have you ever conducted a thorough review of your bank statements? Are you content with just reconciling bank statements with that of your business financial account statements without thorough review, simply because the accounts are balanced? If your answer to any of these questions is "NO", then you need to conduct a forensic audit of your bank statements.
A forensic audit of your bank statements can help improve your cashflow by recovering excessive charges on your bank transactions. Cashflow is impacted by bank charges. Due to the fact that bank charges take money out of a company's account and lower its balance, these are viewed as an expense or expenditure. When a company is capable of meeting its obligations, return shareholder funds, as well as hedge against potential financial difficulties, this is referred to as having positive cashflow.
Bank charges
Bank charges are fees or money paid by a customer for bank services. Banks earn money through the charges made by them to their customers’ corporate and personal accounts. Some of the bank charges include bank account maintenance fees, ATM withdrawal bank fees, online transfer bank fees, processing and management fees for loans, account closure fees…
Arbitrary bank charges
Excessive or illegal bank charges have been a problem in the banking industry for years, which has affected companies and also individuals at large. Financial Street‘s findings revealed that bank charges have thrown some of the customers out of business while some are struggling to survive.
In 2012, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) established a Consumer Protection Department to provide a strong voice to banks’ customers and moderate the arbitrary charges.
An article published in This Day, reported that as of June 2021, the CBN had already recovered ₦89.2 billion in excess and erroneous charges levied against customers by Nigerian banks. It was shown that banks use a variety of strategies to increase the bank charges, which include multiple charges.
To avoid excessive bank charges, companies should:
just like any contract, always read the terms and conditions of bank documents.
conduct forensic audit of their bank statements regularly.
In summary, excessive bank charges have grown to be a challenging problem in the financial sector, and they do not appear to be going away. In order to avoid having a poor cashflow, it is crucial for businesses to constantly monitor activities on their bank statements.
With our consultants’ experience spanning over 20 years in the financial services industry, we could help you recover bank charges that are not in accordance with Bankers’ tariffs, and/or bank charges that are not in line with your loan agreements.
For a free consultation, email us at: enquries@ovacgroup.com
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