AMCON Revs up recovery effort, appoints professional debt resolution firms as partners

                        

As part of its renewed strategy to resolve over six thousand accounts with loan balances of N100million and below, the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) has flagged off its induction programme for successful firms that qualified as its Asset Management Partners (AMPs). The AMPs are consortiums with specialist skills required to ensure recovery and debt resolution; banking, legal, valuation and accounting.

Speaking at the event in Lagos yesterday, Mr. Kola Ayeye, AMCON Executive Director, who represented Mr. Ahmed Kuru, Managing Director/CEO said collaborating with AMPs had become necessary because the Corporation has a total loan portfolio of over twelve thousand loans of various sizes and sectors that are still lingering six years after AMCON was established. According to him, when this is compared to AMCON’s staff strength of approximately three hundred, it was obvious AMCON surely needs a strategic approach to improve coverage and results.

Ayeye explained that this trend to strengthen recoveries is the rationale for appointing AMPs stating that, “That is the reason we are all here today to work together in resolving the over six thousand accounts with loan balances of N100million and below. We are convinced that the AMP programme is key to the success of AMCON, and we will give you all the necessary support to make you succeed in this exercise.”

While reminding the participants that the job of debt recovery was never an easy task, he promised that AMCON would during the course of the event share a set of rules, practices and processes, which would help each AMP deliver optimally, adding, “We will provide you with a feedback channel that will attend to all your professional needs and also provide necessary guidance.”

Assuring that AMCON will not let them walk alone in this assignment, the Executive Director urged the AMPs to take this novel initiative seriously because AMCON intends to nurture its transformation into the preferred model for recovery and resolution of non-performing loans in the banking sector and financial services industry. A new sub-sector should emerge with desirable job creation and multiplier impact.

A statement from the Corporate Communications Department of AMCON said the AMPs would among other things work with AMCON in tracing, identification and location of obligors with the intent to resolve their outstanding indebtedness. They would also be involved in tracing, identification and location of assets of obligors (both pledged and unpledged) to enhance the Eligible Bank Assets (EBAs) value and achieve set recovery objectives, negotiation of settlement and restructuring terms with identified obligors in line with approved guidelines. The AMPs will be vested with the wide powers granted AMCON by its enabling Act.   

Recently, AMCON called for applications from reputable and qualified entities with the requisite experience to collaborate with it as AMPs to resolve these debts. AMCON was established in 2010 as a resolution vehicle to purchase the non-performing loans from banks, inject liquidity into the banks and subsequently recover the purchased bad loans. Over the last five years, AMCON has successfully stabilised the Nigerian banking sector by restructuring and collecting some of these loans.