The Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN) says it has within 31 years delivered 39,000 new homes under the National Housing Fund (NHF) scheme.

The bank’s Managing Director/Chief Executive, Mr Shehu Osidi, said this when he presented a paper at the ongoing 18th Africa International Housing Show on Wednesday in Abuja.

BRANDPOWER reports that the paper was titled “Financing the Housing We Need: A New Dawn at FMBN as an Institutional Enabler’’.

Osidi said: “Since its re-establishment in 1993, the Bank has delivered about 39,000 new homes, about 25,500 mortgages and over 120,000 micro housing loans, all within a single-digit interest rate lending regime.

Nigeria needs 550,000 houses annually for 10 years, says Housing Minister

“Under the National Housing Fund (NHF) Scheme, it has registered 26,350 organisations and over 5.8 million cumulative contributors with over 1 million accounting for the self-employed sector.

“The Bank has disbursed the cumulative of N440 billion under its various loan windows to drive affordable housing finance for the Nigerian economy.

“To its record, the sum of N84.8 billion has been refunded to 492,604 contributors who exited the Scheme in line with the provisions of the NHF Act,’’ Osidi said.

According to him, the bank initiated constructive engagement with the Federal Ministry of Finance.

He said this was to secure refunds of the wrongful deductions of NHF contributions misconstrued as revenue under the 40 per cent deduction regime of revenue accruing to Federal Agencies..

“This led to the recovery of 12 billion Naira out of the outstanding 19 billion into the Bank’s coffers.

“We are still engaging relevant authorities until the deductions are stopped and we recover the outstanding balance of the trapped NHF funds,’’he said

According to him, the Bank has expanded its bouquet of loans from mortgage financing, to housing construction, to micro housing financing and more recently, a rent-to-own product over these years.

He said that with the rapidly changing landscape and growing need for affordable housing financing, FMBN’s clientele base had widened.

He added that the clientele base had widened from solely primary mortgage banks to private and public real estate developers, housing cooperatives and now to individual NHF contributors for home self-construction.

According to him, the latest additions to its loan products are the Home Improvement and Rent Assistance loans, which are micro housing loans specifically intended for but not exclusive to the non-salaried informal sector.

“Though these numbers may seem modest in the face of the yawning gaps in the Housing Sector, FMBN has not failed to be a major contributor to the development of the Sector.

“The current Executive Management desires to transform FMBN into an institution that delivers on its promises and is responsive to the yearnings and aspirations of its stakeholders.

“These includes, contributors, loan beneficiaries, regulators, partners as well as staff,’’he said

Osidi said that after careful and critical examination of the Bank and where it needed to be in the nearest future, the new executive management unveiled a seven-point agenda on assumption of office in February.

“This included, recalibrating FMBN automation process to fully exploit all that technology can offer across all our business processes,” he said.

He added that it also included promoting cost efficiency, enhancing credit quality and reducing non-performance loans, effective project management and expanding strategic partnerships.

Others, he said involved enthroning a robust organisation and employee performance management system and standardised capacity building and talent management.

“We recognise the place of human resources in transforming organisations and accordingly, this management will be deliberate in the way we approach our capacity building efforts and training programmes.

“We will also try as much as the system permits to put round pegs in round holes as well as be deliberate on the issue of succession planning.”

According to Osidi, we want to make FMBN a good place to work and fulfill employee’s aspirations.

Osidi said that the Bank had consistently served the needs of the Nigerian populace within the limits of its resources and would continue to do so in line with its mandate.