The Central Bank of Nigeria has disclosed N430 million in fines across 21 institutions for delays in resolving customer complaints, according to its 2025 Annual Report released on 29 July 2026. A separate N1.26 billion in 11 further penalties was imposed for regulatory breaches and failures to respond to regulatory queries.
The report also shows that the regulator received 23,129 consumer complaints during 2025, up 10.5% from the 20,925 lodged in 2024, of which 18,824 were resolved. Local-currency claims handled by the CBN rose to N40.61 billion in 2025 from N17.13 billion in 2024.
PENALTIES FOR COMPLAINT DELAYS
The N430 million in fines was spread across 21 institutions penalised specifically for delays in resolving customer complaints, the CBN said in its annual report. That framing highlights the regulator's continuing focus on the responsiveness of licensed banks and other financial institutions to customer grievances, and its willingness to translate those concerns into measurable financial penalties.
A separate tranche of N1.26 billion was imposed in 11 additional penalties for regulatory breaches and for failures to respond to regulatory queries. Together the two categories illustrate the range of supervisory concerns the CBN is prepared to sanction, from procedural non-compliance to lapses in engagement with the regulator itself.
The distribution of the fines across a large number of institutions rather than concentrated on a few names suggests systemic weaknesses in complaints handling across the Nigerian banking sector, rather than isolated failings at particular firms. That pattern has practical implications for boards and senior management overseeing consumer-facing operations.
COMPLAINT VOLUMES CLIMB
The 10.5% rise in consumer complaints to 23,129 in 2025 comes against a background of rapid growth in digital banking and payments usage across Nigeria. Of the total, 18,824 complaints were reported as resolved, leaving a residual pipeline that will carry into the current year.
The sharp increase in local-currency claims handled, from N17.13 billion in 2024 to N40.61 billion in 2025, points to both the growing size of individual disputes and the increased engagement of the CBN's consumer-protection machinery. The Central Bank's Consumer Protection Department typically handles claims that customers have been unable to resolve directly with their banks.
By publishing the fines and complaint statistics in its 2025 Annual Report, the CBN is providing an aggregate picture of enforcement activity rather than naming individual banks. The disclosure nevertheless offers a benchmark for the industry, signalling that further failings on customer complaints and regulatory engagement are likely to attract similar penalties. The report is available through the Central Bank's website.
The combination of enforcement statistics and complaint data in the same annual report allows external observers to link supervisory outcomes to the underlying volume of consumer grievances. That contextualisation is important because it shows how the regulator's penalty framework responds not only to the fact of complaints but to how promptly and effectively they are resolved by the institutions concerned.
The 2025 Annual Report also functions as one of the Central Bank of Nigeria's most comprehensive public accountability documents, capturing the range of its supervisory, monetary and consumer-protection activities during the year. Including the fines and complaint figures within that document places them alongside broader disclosures on the state of the financial system.