Access Bank Nigeria Plc on the watch of its Group Managing Director, Mr Herbert Wigwe is bouncing like a sportsman with jump-enabled shoes and thriving well at a time that many analysts are projecting Nigerian banks to walk a tightrope amid low revenue environment.
Reasons: brilliant ideas, good management, good thinking, innovation to build industry resilience and drive long-term sustainability by Wigwe and his team. They have a strong focus on consumer lending, payments and remittances, digitization of customer journeys, and customer acquisition at scale. These customers include valuable high net-worth individuals, corporate bodies and other institutions.
In his book, Business Stripped Bare, celebrated iconic entrepreneur and founder of the Virgin Group, Sir Richard Branson, says, “without trustworthy banks, there can be no business, no employment, no money.”
According to Branson, “People have got to be able to go to bed at night secure in the knowledge that the money they deposited today will still be there for them to withdraw tomorrow.”
Access Bank fits into the model of the trustworthy bank that Sir Richard talks about. This bank has been firing on all cylinders, acquiring more values, as it rides into eight more African countries. This is happening despite the claims by industry experts that Nigerian banking industry is faced with a tougher operating environment that could threaten the operators’ ability to meet their stakeholders’ needs and expectations yet perform meaningful corporate social responsibility roles. According to these experts, even valuable customers such as high net-worth individuals, corporate bodies and other institutions are equally challenged.
But not Access Bank, it is able to weather this storm like an eagle. Its plans to expand to more African countries is part of a strategy to support trade and finance in the continent and take advantage of the newly formed African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The countries are Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Angola, Namibia and Ethiopia.
Its GMD Mr Wigwe, disclosed this during a presentation and investor conference call. Right now, the tier-one bank operates in 12 countries. According to Wigwe, across Africa, there is an opportunity for the bank to expand to high-potential markets, leveraging the benefits of AfCFTA., observing that the pan-Africa trade agreement, among other benefits, will expand intra-Africa trade and provide real opportunities for Africa.
Asserting that the bank would use its office in London to expand representative offices in India, Lebanon and China, he stated that the plan is for the bank to establish its presence in 22 African countries so as to diversify its earnings and take advantage of growth opportunities in Africa.
According to him, Africa has enormous potential and there are opportunities for an African bank that is well run, that understands compliance and has the capacity to support trade and the right technology infrastructure to support payments and remittances, without taking incremental risks.
“We believe that we are best positioned to basically do all of that. Our focus is to become an aggregator in Africa and we are building a global payment gateway and providing trade finance support and correspondent banking across the continent. We are focusing on the key markets.
“The approach would always be that in the country we wish to go to, that we have the right skills. We would not just be a drop in the country in which we are present, we would make sure that we have an impactful presence in each of the major countries in which we are present.
“In doing this, we are also mindful of the country we are going to so as to make sure that it is of benefit to the bank. As we do this, we are working with our friends and partners.
“We are diversifying our earnings away from volatile markets as well and we are orchestrating our operations from the global payments gateway and ensuring that using Access Bank UK, providing corresponding services from digital platforms, the overall profitability of our franchise,” he explained.
Commenting further, on AfCFTA, he said the bank would use its digital framework to benefit from the deal. And as the bank continues to entrench itself in the local market because, Wigwe believes there is still so much work to be done.“So, we are doing everything possible to satisfy our customers and also to ensure that our channels are adequately secured. We are also ensuring that our staff is very efficient,” the CEO said.
Access Bank has acquired more heft with it getting the approval of holding company (Holdco) structure. The Holdco will consist of four subsidiaries: Access Bank Group; payments business; consumer lending and agency banking; and insurance brokerage.
According to Wigwe Access Bank Group will consist of Nigeria, Africa and international subsidiaries, while the payments subsidiary will leverage the strong suite of the bank’s assets.
“The consumer lending business has seen 60 per cent growth in digital lending volume and value. The insurance subsidiary will adopt a dynamic and creative approach to deliver value-added services focused to meet customer insurance needs,” he said.
He explained that Access Bank has been driving its revenue growth through retail expansion, which has grown consistently across all income lines, driven by a strong focus on consumer lending, payments and remittances, digitisation of customer journeys, and customer acquisition at scale
“We have maintained strong capital levels despite investments for growth, accumulating capital over time. Despite investment in organic and inorganic growth in the past, the bank has improved its capital ratios, given optimum capital structure (tier 1 and tier 2),” he added.
Another innovation by Access Bank Plc is the way it has partnered with American Express to broaden the acceptance and usage of American Express cards in the country. According to Mr Robert Giles, Access Bank’s Senior Banking Advisor Retail Banking, the partnership would enable American Express Cardholders to use their cards at a wider range of merchant locations in Nigeria for tourism, business or private visit, and international American Express cardholders would also be able to withdraw cash from Access Bank ATMs.
“This announcement places Access Bank as the first full-service bank to acquire merchants who will accept American Express Card payments in the country.
“Local merchants will now have the option to accept American Express through Access Bank, thereby not only encouraging increased merchant business activity but also offering travelling American Express Card holders the opportunity to transact using their preferred method of payment.
“This new partnership will broaden the acceptance of American Express payments via Access Bank as well as Access Bank ATMs and e-commerce websites nationwide,” Giles said, adding that Access Bank merchants who embraced American Express cards would benefit from an additional high-spending customer base.
“This is great news for Nigerian businesses and will help bring foreign exchange inflows into the country. We value the confidence that American Express has placed in us to significantly enhance the payment experience in our market,” he said.
Vivi Galani, Vice President EMEA Network Partnerships for American Express, said the company was pleased with the partnership to expand its presence in Nigeria.
“This agreement will give international card members even more locations to use their cards in Nigeria, whether they are travelling for business or leisure, and this will be particularly important as international travel resumes. For local merchants, it provides the opportunity to capture more business from global card holders visiting the country,” Galani said.
In another brilliant move, Access Bank has also decided to take a shot at Bancassurance. Why is this? It plans to avail its numerous customers the best underwriting and claims experience by entering into a partnership with Coronation Insurance Plc to drive an efficient and effective Bancassurance system.
The partnership was introduced to the Corporate Clients of Access Bank during an earlier organized webinar themed, “Managing Risks that Keep CEOs up at Night,” held on October 7, 2020. According to Wigwe, Coronation Insurance satisfied all the required criteria, part of which informed the decision to establish this relationship which is perceived as a transformational partnership.
On why Coronation Insurance was picked as its partner, Mr Wigwe said: “In choosing among a pool of potential organizations to fill this gap, we have had to look at a couple of identifiers, with the first among them being underwriter speed of response to customers and the second is the financial strength and the capitalization base of the underwriter.
“Given all these, and with the interest of its customers at heart, Access Bank considered all of these qualities and found coronation to be leading between the various categories. We want our customers to have the best underwriting and claims experiences.”
In his own response, the Chairman of Coronation Insurance, Mutiu Sunmonu, commended the partnership. He said: “The Partnership will elevate the level at which Insurance Services are delivered to Corporate Customers in the Country, matching the level of growth recorded in the Banking sector over the last two decades, only over a shorter period”
A selection of distinguished keynote speakers from prestigious institutions with expert knowledge was invited to deliver presentations and share their insights on the topic of managing business risks.
Bode Augusto, founding MD of Augusto & CO shared detailed insights with respect to macroeconomic and project completion risks. Simon Morris, Partner of Trinity International (UK) went further in elaborating on macroeconomic risks that impact businesses and how to mitigate these risks while Nico Conradie, the MD of Munich Re Africa (South Africa) gave very practical guidance and advice on how CEO’s can safeguard their organisation from cyber risks and fraud.
According to Yinka Adekoya, CEO/MD of Coronation Insurance, we are pleased to have commenced this partnership with Access Bank and the webinar event is one of the initiatives we have outlined for customer engagements. We are looking forward to more customer engagements”.
With all these steps, Access Bank is living up to its billing of a holding company (holdco) structure, with four subsidiaries: Access Bank Group; payments business; consumer lending and agency banking; and insurance brokerage on the watch of Herbert Wigwe.
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