Wema Bank Loses N2.9 Billion Over Transfer glitch

Wema Bank Plc is currently battling to recover about N2.9 billion funds allegedly withdrawn from the bank without authorization due to a system glitch.

In a lawsuit filed before the Federal High Court in Lagos, the bank is seeking a preservative order requiring the financial institutions involved to return the funds amounting to N2,906,226,083 that have been traced to accounts within their institutions.

The legal action follows an operational failure in Wema Bank’s core banking system on January 16, 2025, which led to the unauthorized transfer of the funds from customers’ accounts.

According to an affidavit by the bank’s Head of Special Review and Investigation, Kehinde Buari, the system glitch resulted in unintended transactions impacting accounts both within Wema Bank and 26 defendant financial institutions.

In response, Wema Bank said it launched an internal investigation to trace and recover the missing funds. While part of the unauthorized transactions was found within the bank’s own system, a significant portion was discovered in external accounts linked to the defendants.

The bank further disclosed that the total sum of N888,301,598.15 has been salvaged by some of the financial institutions.

Investigations revealed that some recipients attempted to hide or obscure the origin of the funds by transferring them between multiple accounts.

Wema Bank quickly alerted the affected financial institutions about the glitch and the fraudulent transactions, requesting that they freeze the affected accounts.

To support its ongoing recovery efforts, Wema Bank’s internal audit and legal teams compiled reports tracing the movement of the funds, identifying the recipient accounts, and detailing the amounts recovered so far.

The bank also engaged the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to track the funds across several financial institutions, which led to further communication with the defendant banks regarding the unauthorized transfers.

Wema Bank is now seeking a court order compelling the 26 financial institutions to return the recovered funds and any additional amounts that can still be traced.

The bank is also requesting that the court direct the institutions to provide details of account holders who received and dissipated the unauthorized funds, to enable law enforcement agencies to carry out further investigations and recover additional funds.

Furthermore, Wema Bank is asking the court to place the affected account holders on the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Credit Risk Management System and other financial watchlists via their Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs) until the full recovery of the stolen funds.

The bank emphasized that, while some of the affected financial institutions have taken initial steps to restrict the unauthorized transactions, a formal court order is essential to ensure full compliance and restitution.

Wema Bank warned that failing to obtain the required legal directives could lead to the release of the frozen funds, undermining their recovery efforts.

TCN reports that this incident is not the first of its kind in Nigeria. In January, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) secured a court order to recover ₦1.9 billion that was mistakenly credited to customer accounts due to a system error in October 2024.

These incidents are raising concerns about how Nigerian banks protect interbank transactions, especially as transaction volumes increase. Some analysts suggest that outdated infrastructure and weak oversight could be contributing to the growing risk of errors and fraud.