The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) and other collaborators on the Joint Regulatory & Enforcement Taskforce welcome Google’s move through its recent policy to ban digital lending applications, otherwise known as loan apps, from having access to users’ personal information such as contacts, photos, videos, precise location, data and call logs from its Play Store.
The Joint Regulatory and Enforcement Taskforce includes the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Nigeria Data Protection Bureau (NDPB)
The FCCPC commendation was conveyed in a press release signed by Babatunde Irukera, the Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of the Commission, and made available via its Twitter handle on Wednesday.
Recall that The NIGERIAN OBSERVER last week published a list of 173 digital lending apps approved by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to operate in Nigeria with 119 of them fully approved and 54 with conditional approval.
Irukera stated that this move by Google is in line with FCCPC position and resolves that “such access is intrusive, and violates consumer privacy on multiple levels, including, and especially third-party privacy rights of persons who provided their personal information or data to customers or borrowers of digital lenders, but have no relationship or privity to the transaction[s] between such customers and the digital lenders.”
Irukera emphasises that the step Google has taken is an important step in streamlining and sanitising the digital lending space, adding that it is an outcome of extended and intense investigation, enforcement, intervention, collaboration, and engagement, and another example of how the right approach to regulation can improve and strengthen ecosystems.
“The Commission and partners on the JRTF recognise the value digital lending can, and does provide in society, as well as respect lenders’ desire, indeed prerogative to recover; and borrowers’ obligations to pay back loans.
However, the Commission insists that this important component of commerce and consumer service is not incompatible, or mutually exclusive with legal, ethical, and otherwise acceptable methods of recovery or securing compliance with obligations. Google’s progressive decision underscores this position of the Commission.”
“The Limited Interim Regulatory/Registration Framework and Guidelines for Digital Lending (LIRRFGDL) published and enforced by the Commission preceded Google’s policy, and this institutionalisation by Google affirms legitimacy and further reduces the possibility or occurrence of abusive conduct by any lender.
“This is an appropriate respite for consumers who have been subjected to abusive, intrusive, defamatory, and other forms of unacceptable borrowing or recovery practices, and an assurance that such practices are less likely to occur going forward, and where they do, the regulatory process will address the illegal conduct.”
Iruekera concluded that the Commission is proud to have initiated and led this effort and set a pace that is becoming a globally applicable standard.
