The Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRC) has urged accountants and other professionals involved in the financial reporting process to leverage on its new individual registration portal to boost their businesses.

Its Executive Secretary, Mr Daniel Asapokhai, made the urge in Lagos at the unveiling of the new portal which supersedes the one introduced in 2013.

Asapokhai said the portal would make the registration process easier for professionals who want to be captured as the council’s registered members.

According to him, the registration will equally ensure members’ names appear on the online register of professionals which the general public can use to confirm their status before dealing with them for businesses.

He said the portal would also make it easier for professionals to do business with government and the public as their registration numbers could be confirm online.

Asapokhai also said that the new portal, which commenced on Aug. 23, was in line with the federal government’s executive order on ease of doing business.

The FRC boss said the council started registering individual professionals in 2013 when identification means such as National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and Biometric Verification Number (BVN) were not available.

He noted that the challenges that came with using biometric process for individual registration six years ago had been eliminated with the existence of the new portal.

The executive secretary said that the adoption of the new identification means became necessary as they can be readily accessed.

“In 2019, I think we should be able to leverage on all of these and it also accord with the philosophy of government that identities data bases should be consolidated in the country.

“So, I think it is a good we are taking advantages of the improvements that have occurred in the environment to make life easier for people that we are dealing with,” he added.

He said the new portal would reduce the footprint of information that the council holds.

His words: “In the past, we would collect all your biometric information, and store it in our system.

“In this new improvement, we don’t even have to collect that information. So, the footprint of the data we are collecting is much reduced.

“We are relying on what exists in the national database. It is partly to address the risk of security issues. So, we are minimising the information we need to hold.

“The portal also reduces the registration process period to the barest minimum.

“With the new individual registration portal, we expect to issue registration numbers within 48 hours after success completion of the online registration process.”

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