L-R: Regional Adviser of US Treasury, Mr Philip Morris; Executive Director Corporate Services, Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Hon. (Mrs) Omolola Abiola-Edewor; MD/CEO, NDIC, Umaru Ibrahim FCIB, mni and Senior Advisor, Office of Technical Assistance (OTA) US Department of Treasury, Mr. William Thomas, during a capacity visit to the Corporation.

The Office ofTechnical Assistance (OTA) of the United States Department of Treasury has commended the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) on the establishment of a world class academy that serves as a reference point for capacity buildingon Deposit Insurance System (DIS) for the African continent.

The Regional Adviser of the US Treasury, Mr. Philip Morris made the commendation in Abuja during a meeting between the NDIC Management and delegates from the Office of Technical Assistanceconvened to explore areas of collaboration towards the enhancement of training needs of the NDIC Academy.

According to Morris, the Corporation’s reputation in the international community was already acknowledged by the International Association of Deposit Insurers (IADI). He added that several African countries now counted on the NDIC Academy for the capacity building for members of their staff. Mr. Morris expressed his confidence that the OTA’s collaboration would further strengthen the Academy’s efforts towards achieving its vision of becoming the model Deposit Insurance Training Institute in Africa and the Asia regions by the year 2020.

In his remarks, the NDIC Managing Director/Chief Executive, Mr. Umaru Ibrahim described the visit as a crucial step towards enhancing service delivery in the operations of the Corporation to address current challenges in the banking sector. He expressed his optimism that the OTA would collaborate with the Corporation in the areas of contingency planning and simulation for bank crisis, including failure resolution strategies such as the Purchase & Assumption (P&A) and bridge bank options already explored by the Corporation. The MD/CE lauded the current efforts of the OTA to contribute to the development of expertise on curriculum development, course design, delivery and evaluation for the NDIC Academy.

Before the current initiative, the NDIC had previously collaborated with the OTA on capacity building for the implementation of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS); Risk Based Supervision (RBS), as well as Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). Under the agreement, 200 members of staff of the Corporation – with eight already considered subject matter experts on the topic – were trained on the IFRS. A further 147 were trained on RBSwhile another 21 also benefitted from capacity building on ERM.