Financial Services Regulations – Nigeria vs USA

There is a wide gap between the US and Nigeria’s level of financial development. Yet, they share many puzzling features, including regulatory trends, structural transformation and response to shocks. For instance, the banking industry in Nigeria has experienced marked changes over recent years, characterized by a decline in the number of banks, growing concentration and increasingly international focus. Like many of their American counterparts, the largest banks transformed into full-service financial firms offer diversified range of products and services to retail and corporate clients.

Growth of non-interest revenue is a noticeable trend; technology is also transforming banking business (among other things) in the decline in paper-based payments, and the emergence of very large financial service firms has continued to mirror the developmental
trend of US financial services. Regulators have had to face challenges in adapting to this new domestic environment by paying attention to domestic credit market, potential shocks from securities and insurance business.

We here analyze the commonalities and the co-movement between the US and Nigerian’s financial service regulations.

• Regulatory Trends: Recent events in the Nigerian financial services landscape suggest that the Nigerian financial services regulators usually mirror the domestic financial services supervisory frameworks after the American example (viz: a broad range of elements of Sarbanes–Oxley entering Nigeria’s Corporate Governance tenets, introduction of “Universal Banking” in 2000, following the repeal of the US Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, and, a decade later, the ongoing scrapping of the Universal Banking following the introduction of the “Volker Rule”, aimed at limiting the banks' trading and investment capabilities, by President Obama in January this year). Also, the extant delineation of commercial bank’s margin lending limits echoes similar restrictions in the US jurisdiction.
  
  
• New Capital Requirements: They are hard-coded into regulation, with references to US$50billion-asset financial firms (investment or commercial banks) described as being “systematically important” to the US financial services industry. Similarly, the new capitalisation requirements for international, regional and merchant banking delineate the level of scrutiny that they will attract in Nigeria. For example, the systemic dangers of banks may raise differing red-flags at differing times unlike the experience of the “rescued banks” in August 2009.
  
  
• Financial Stability Oversight Council: The US council is mandated to specifically scrutinise emergent risks to the whole financial system. Indeed a specific “Vice Chairman for Bank Regulation” has been established to report to the US Congress. Similar responsibility is echoed in the ongoing resuscitation of Nigeria’s Financial Services Regulation Coordinating Committee (FSRCC), promulgation of Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) Act, and support for CBN’s financial services reforms.
  
  
• Stress Tests: Like the US Supervisory Capital Assessment Programs (sensitivity, scenario-tests to forecast capital adequacy), stress tests will soon become regular occurrences instead of dramatic one-offs. They will be more akin to stop-checks and will be an expansion of the type of special examinations of (historic) books that the Central of Nigeria (CBN) carried out in mid-2009.
  
  
• “Living Wills”, as coined by Bloomberg Markets journal: Like an expanded, more elaborate (and more structured) form of Nigeria’s exercises, and as being practiced in the US, systematically important banks may find themselves subject to detailed distressed-sale measures which would reduce the risk and financial burden on trading partners in case of untoward market movements or developments.

As outlined above, and in many other respects, the Nigerian financial services regulation appears to follow similar trend with the US financial services regulation. While leveraging on other jurisdictions’ regulations is not a new phenomenon, adaptability of such regulations to local political and socio-economic realities is critical for success. This is in addition to regulators’ involvement of other stakeholders in the debate on such adaptability. Nigeria appears to have recognised this as demonstrated in the process that led to the banks’ new prudential guideline and AMCON Act. Vincent Nwani is Head of Research at First Bank of Nigeria. The article has been co-authored with Tunji Inaolaji, Research Associate at First Bank.