Stanbic bank opens war on unethical staff, 3 fired, 100 probed

Stanbic Bank Uganda has intensified crackdown against unethical staff.

As we report this, over 100 staff are under investigation for alleged mismanagement of Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) fees.

These include business bankers, personal bankers, affluent bankers, affluent managers and direct sales agents (DSA’s)

Credit Reference Bureau fee is money paid by loan applicants in order for the bank to generate a report used to evaluate borrowing history and record of a client.

When a client applies for a loan, it’s a requirement to perform credit checks from the bank’s third party service providers Compuscan CRB or Metropol CRB for a certain fee, reveals a source.

The fee is then reportedly deposited to a suspense account.

But most personal bankers have been in the habit of picking the money from clients with a filled bank deposit slip with the aim of depositing it later to the suspense account.

And that’s the end. The money in real sense is never deposited.

But they then send a loan application to the loan center with a copy of deposit of those fees but after the loan is processed.

“They eat the money but the credit department remains with a copy of proof sent from the branch,” a source in the bank revealed.

The staff involved have been reportedly taking advantage of the fact that the bank takes time to check out for such anomalies.

However, a recent audit report revealed that whereas a lot of reports are printed and proof of payment attached for each loan, the same monies were not reflecting on the suspense account; there was less.

Investigations discovered that some staff don’t deposit the loan application fees on the suspense account hence plunging the bank into losses in compensating their third party CRN service providers—Compuscan CRB and Metropol CRB.

“It’s mainly service providers Compuscan CRB and Metropol CRB who query because there is an audit trail in the system that shows reports printed by individual users, branch level, regional and country wide. Daily, weekly, monthly and annually that users can’t delete or modify,” a source revealed.

THREE FIRED

Stanbic bank has reportedly already fired three staff members from the eastern region.

They include Peter Ochole – personal banker, Soroti branch; Alex Olengo -Soroti branch and Arthur Wepukhulu – executive banker- Mbale branch.

Wepukhulu joined the bank in 2021. He started as direct sales agents (DSA) in Kampala but due to his close relationship with the Regional manager Eastern, he was reportedly elevated to a personal banker Kotido branch.

A year later, he was elevated to Execute banker and transferred to Mbale branch.

For Olengo, sources say this could have been a trap by some envious bosses to deprive him of bonus payments that are associated with excellent performance.

Some personal bankers can reportedly get between shs2m-15m monthly in bonuses exclusive of salary.

We have further learnt that the suspended staff have since appealed.

We are told there is precedence in 2020 when staff that had been terminated over fraud cases appealed and succeeded.

Outgoing CEO, Anne Juuko has been hailed for taking a tougher stance against fraud at the bank both internally and externally.