(R-L) Cyril Chukwuma, MD/CEO, Bank PHB; Alwan Hassan and Olusegun Bolaji, executive directors of the bank, during the bank's press briefing held in Lagos recently.

THE Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), would soon put in place a state of the art communication network that would ensure it becomes as proactive as its counterparts in other parts of the world.This is coming on the heels of increasing regulatory demands, BusinessWorld can reveal.
The apex bank has awarded a contract worth about N1 billion to an information technology firm in  the country for the implementation of a state of the art Internet Protocol (IP) telephony that would ease its communication challenges across all the branches throughout the country.
The project would also ensure that the apex bank has direct interface with the banking industry with a view to communicate seamlessly and at a reduced cost. This will, in effect, ease the bank’s regulatory activities.
BusinessWorld Intelligence can reveal that about three IT companies were short-listed for the job after careful evaluation of their commercial and technical bids.
All the three short-listed bidders were said to have presented almost the same prices at the commercial level of the bids. However, none of the three companies won the deal.
IP telephony is an important part of the convergence of computers, telephones and television into a single integrated information environment. It would provide a way for CBN to extend consistent communications services to all its employees in their workspaces, whether they are in the headquarters, at branch offices, working remotely, or are mobile.
BusinessWorld Intelligence can also disclose that the CBN decided to embark on the project on the realization that many of the commercial banks in the country have superior communication network than the apex bank that regulates their activities, a development which the new CBN management is not comfortable with.
There are strong indications that the contract when fully implemented, will drastically improve the bank’s response time and will enable it react to critical oversight functions before things start going wrong. Banking icons have explained that the absence of some integrated information platform in the apex bank was largely responsible for the failure by the regulatory body to carry out adequate investigations and supervision.