The Federal government through the National Data Protection Commission has slammed Fidelity Bank with a fine of N555.8 million for violating customer data protection laws.
This announcement was made by the commission’s National Commissioner, Vincent Olatunji, at the Validation Workshop on the Nigeria Data Protection Act General Application and Implementation Directive in Abuja on Wednesday.
According to Olatunji, Fidelity Bank breached the National Data Protection Act (NDP Act) 2023 and the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) 2019, leading to the imposition of the fine. The penalty, which represents 0.1 per cent of the bank’s annual gross revenue in 2023, is the highest fine ever issued by the commission.
Olatunji 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,” he added.