The Deposit Protection Fund (DPF) has commenced the verification of documents of the company and joint account holders of ECF Uganda, the microfinance that was closed last month. The document verification exercise is aimed at facilitating payment of the deposits.
This follows the completion of payment of individual depositors who had up to 10 million Shillings and had their documents submitted and verified. DPF also urged those individuals with 10 million and below, who have not yet been paid to submit their valid original National Identification Cards.
Company account holders are required to submit documents including a letter confirming the account in ECF Uganda Ltd, and the signatures of the signatories to the accounts, as well as their National IDs. Others are the Memorandum and Articles of Association, a Certificate of Incorporation and location of the company, as well as a board resolution indicating the bank account to which the deposit should be paid.
These also have to be certified by the Uganda Registration Services Bureau. For joint accounts, the DPF says the members will have to submit copies of valid original IDs of the signatories as well as the resolution by all account holders on how the payment shall be effected. According to the records at DPF and Bank of Uganda, the depositors with not more than 10 million accounted for 98 percent, and their accounts held about 2 billion Shillings.
Account holders with more than 10 million Shillings, and who are by law supposed to be handled by the Bank of Uganda had deposits valued at about. According to BOU, payment of these will commence on February 19, this year. DPF says that the exercise would have been much faster with all the protected depositors paid but for the lack of updated personal records at the banks.
Julia Oyet, the Chief Executive says this has been one of the main challenges and urges all account holders in Uganda to update their records with their national IDs and mobile phone numbers so that it would be easier in similar cases in the future.
The total number of depositors that were worth 10 million or worth was 2066 with accounts worth 53.9, while more than half of these had loan balances exceeding their deposits, while those yet to be paid by DPF have claims worth 174.8 million shillings, according to Yusuf Mukiibi Director Finance at DPF.
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