SERVICES

One of the areas of our specialties is review of bank charges and recovery of excessive charges found therein. We review bank charges with our dedicated Bank Charges Review Software called Banker and developed with consideration for local and international monetary policies. To stay afloat, the banks deviced various means of generating income. One of the means but not quite known to many is that of charging excessive and spurious charges on customers and/or the underpayment of interest due to customers. By recovering excessive charges (overcharge) for our clients and securing waivers, their business becomes more profitable.

It is pertinent to note that this exercise is far beyond the scope of both internal and external audit. Experience has shown that people misconstrue this exercise with audit but our clients have since realised the difference after we have worked through their accounts of 2 or 5 audited years and still recovered excessive charges. Below are some of the areas of overcharge we look into:

• Application of unapproved and unagreed interest rate:



Sometimes, the rates and fees used for debit interest/fees on facilities availed might be inconsistent with the laid down monetary policies and might not be as agreed with the bank(s). It is sometimes a fraction of percentage less for credit interest or a fraction of percentage more for debit interest. The implication is that the account holder is denied of his/her legitimate funds while the bank rakes in more profit by way of excessive charges.



Our Banker software ensures that interest and fees are based on agreed rates within the limit of the monetary policies.



• Application of COT (Commission-On-Turnover):



COT is one of the major means through which banks overcharge customers especially the high networth and volume accounts. There are about six classes of transactions exempted from COT charges but most of the banks do otherwise. Sometimes, because of the volume of transactions, you might have negotiated COT rate with your bank. In order to increase their COT earnings, the banks use rate higher than agreed rate without informing customers.



Our Banker software ensures that the COT calculation is as agreed within the limit of the monetary policies.



• Application of undue excessive/default charge:



Credit facilities (overdraft, excess overdraft, finance, lease, etc) are given to proven customers to facilitate and promote their businesses beyond their financial capabilities. It is mandatory that accounts running on facilities must attract debit interest. In some banks and for some account holders, the stipulated limit does not mean the customer cannot exceed the limit but the amount by which the limit is exceeded (called excess/default) would attract a higher debit interest rate. Contrary to monetary policies, when limit is exceeded some banks calculate interest using excess rate on both limit and excess thereby overcharging the customer on the limit.



Our Banker software ensures interest calculation on facilities (limit and excess) is in accordance with the monetary policies and procedure of interest calculation.



• Application of unauthorised fees on facilities:



There are fees allowed to be charged on bank facilities. These fees have rules and regulations guiding their applications, computations and frequencies. Most times, some of the banks violate the rules and regulations on fees by applying wrong procedures and frequencies.



Our Banker software eliminates this practice by ensuring that all fees are in line with rules and regulations of lending fees.



• Inappropriate management of BAs and CPs:



BA (Bankers Acceptance) and CP (Commercial Papers) are instruments used by banks to avail credit facilities to creditworthy customers. Inappropriate BA and CP parameters like interest rates, tenor/duration termination, fees, rollover differentials, etc could lead to huge amount of overcharge on the account absorbing the fees/charges.



Our Banker software is equipped with the mechanism to generate appropriate parameters for BA and CP charges thereby eliminating all possibilities of overcharge and increasing the profitability of the instruments.



• Foreign Exchange Sales, Bidding and Rates:



Another major means of overcharge on facility accounts is exchange rates applied on some foreign exchange transactions. Several times, the banks apply unauthorised exchange rates on forex transactions thereby short-changing the customers.



Our Banker software is a multi-currency application and allows transactions in other currencies with appropriate exchange rates at bidding dates.



• Application of backdated/postdated value/effective dates:



Backdating of debit transaction is a situation in which a withdrawal is given a value/effective date earlier than the transaction date. An example is when a withdrawal that took place on Friday 10th January, 2003 is said to be effective (i.e. having value date) on Monday 6th January, 2003. Postdating of credit transaction is a situation in which a lodgement is given a value/effective date later than the supposed value date. An example is when a lodgement that took place on the Monday 13th January, 2003 and supposed to have value on 16th January, 2003 is given 20th January, 2003.



The monetary policies states clearing period for every class of transaction thereby enabling customers to determine appropriate value/effective date of their transactions. Backdating/postdating of value dates is another major means of bank overcharge as it imposes undue debit interest on customer and reduces credit interest due to customers.



Our Banker software is equipped with excellent value date generation mechanism with consideration for weekends and holidays thereby detecting overcharge that emanated from wrong value dates.



• Inclusion of unknown cheques:



This is a situation in which a cheque with the same human-interpreted serial number with yours and owned by another customer was debited into your account and account of the owner thereby making an unauthorised withdrawal from your account. This situation is very dangerous when your account is having high confirmation limit and continuous overdraft facility because you may not know when an unknown cheque is withdrawing funds from your account.



Our Banker software has an in-built mechanism to detect unknown cheques.

Another area of our specialties is recovery the unpaid share dividends, bonus shares and return money cheques. Because of the past and present crisis in the stock market, we are convinced that share-holders that has sold their shares or still holding their shares can recover the losses occasioned by the negligence of the companies in which they had their shares. With our years of experience in the capital market, in-depth knowledge of the lapses that caused the crisis and believing that you have shares in one/more companies, we have strong conviction that we can recover substantial volume of your known and unknown losses on shares.

The power and benefits derived from computer installations are determined by the software in operation. Under this service, we design and develop software packages ranging from simple database management system to complex account management systems for private and public establishments. To ensure that our software measure up with user requirement, we carefully conduct detailed specification interview with the intended user. After the interview, our design experts proceed to design the most suitable procedures on which the software will be developed by our development experts.
In addition to designing and developing software packages, we also render software amendment service for old applications requiring upgrade. Our software design and development service spans over the following tasks in phases:

• Systems investigation & specification interview
• Systems design & presentation for approval
• Systems development
• Test installation
• Final installation
• System changeover and user training

a. Banker (Bank Charges Review Software)
This is a Bank Charges Review Software. It is for electronic reconciliation of bank accounts and to aid the users in managing their accounts, to detect and prevent excessive charges imposed on their accounts.

b. Asset Management software (Fixed Asset Register Software & Fleet Management Software)
These are software developed for the management of fixed asset and fleet of vehicles. The software are equipped with asset registration, movement, improvement, transfer, disposal, accounts, custodian profiles, asset-in-store and Work-In-Progress assets.

Another factor that determine the power and benefits derived from computer systems is the operation knowledge of the users. To ensure that computer systems are used appropriately to derive the maximum benefits from the installation, the application users and supervising IT staff must be given adequate operation training with regards to the software in use

We conduct corporate training for both private and public establishments having computer systems and desiring proficiency. Our corporate training programme covers training on our software and some other special-purpose software like:

• Banker Software administration and implementation
• Documents Management
• Spreadsheet applications
• Programming applications
• Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic
• Programming with SQL Server
• Excel applications