By Abiola Olawale
The National Data Protection Commission (NDPC) has sanctioned Fidelity Bank with a fine of N555.8 million over infractions relating to breaches of its customers’ data which amounts to ethical misconduct.
This was made known by the commission’s National Commissioner, Vincent Olatunji. Olatunji while speaking at the Validation Workshop on the Nigeria Data Protection Act General Application and Implementation Directive on Wednesday, revealed that Fidelity Bank was found guilty of breaching the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) of 2019 and the Nigeria Data Protection (NDP) Act of 2023.
According to him, the fine slammed against Fidelity Bank is the highest to be issued by the Commission.
He explained that the fine was aggravated by the bank’s arrogance and poor cooperation during its investigation.
He said: “Data protection compliance is important and we have stated that non-compliance will be punished. We have penalties that range from N10m or up to two per cent of gross earnings for the previous year.
“But our approach has been creating awareness and letting people know what we are supposed to be doing, and most of the breaches, we try to look at the level of breach, impact, and the number of data subjects affected and the level of cooperation by the organisation involved on the remuneration fee.
“Since we started, the major penalty we issued was yesterday (Tuesday) on fidelity bank. For the violation of the NDP Act, 2023, and the NDPR, 2019, we issued a fine of N555.8m and they have to pay.
“We have observed serious breaches and we have been working with them, investigating the issue since April 2023. But by the time we finalised our findings, they became arrogant, and we decided to issue a full penalty on them, which is about 0.1 per cent of their earnings for 2023.
“This is to be paid within 14 days upon the receipt of this notice.”
