FCMB Sort Code in Nigeria and Where It Is Printed

Look along the line of magnetic-ink numbers near the bottom of an FCMB cheque leaf for a group of nine digits beginning 214. That group is your sort code. The Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) cheque rules make the code part of every cheque, and its guidelines say the same line can carry the bank’s routing number, the account number and the cheque number.

Rely on that printed code or one the bank gives you for your branch. FCMB does not publish its branch sort codes anywhere we could read, and neither does the CBN or the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).

Without a cheque book

Go to the branch that holds your account, because each code belongs to one branch, and that may not be the branch nearest to you. On a transfer form too, the code wanted belongs to the branch holding the account the form is asking about. FCMB’s branch network page lists its branches state by state, with their addresses.

Head office is the fallback. The bank is First City Monument Bank Ltd, the commercial bank in FCMB Group Plc, and the group’s contact page gives its address as Primrose Tower, 17A Tinubu Street, Lagos, with the phone number +234 (0) 1 279 3030. There is also a customer service page on FCMB’s own site. Ask for the sort code of your account’s branch, with the account number to hand. We found no FCMB page saying that its app or its USSD menu shows it.

A branch that has closed or moved needs the same call. Ask which branch holds your account now and what its code is, and do not reuse the old one from memory or from a list.

Is there an FCMB sort code list in PDF?

Not from FCMB. Its branch network page has no sort codes on it, and we found no official list anywhere else. The list copied around the internet covers 124 branches, against the more than 200 branches and cash centres the group says it has. It shows the Aba and Umuahia branches with Imo’s state code and Lokoja with Abuja’s, and it gives one and the same code to three different branches, which cannot be right at any date.

Those state codes count because of a circular the CBN sent to every bank and to NIBSS on 7 November 2018. A branch’s sort code must carry the code of the state it is in, and banks using another state’s code would be sanctioned. So a code that was right for a branch before then may have been replaced since, and only the bank can tell you.

Testing a code against its state

The CBN’s standards on bank account numbers give each digit a job. For an FCMB branch in Lagos, the nine read like this:

The 214 alone is the bank code, and the sort code is all nine digits, so there is no single code for Lagos, only that 214 15 start. An FCMB code in Abuja should start 214 08, in Kaduna 214 11, in Katsina 214 13, in Bauchi 214 03 and in Port Harcourt 214 21. A code that passes is not proved right, because the test only catches the obvious mistakes. To read a code you have been given, find its fourth and fifth digits here:

We answer the same question for Union Bank, Ecobank and Sterling Bank.