Showing posts with label banking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label banking. Show all posts

Monday, April 3, 2023

Video - Cash crunch spurs digital payment system in Nigeria



The Central Bank of Nigeria's demonetization exercise has been criticized for many things – but it did spur an aggressive surge in the use of digital payment channels in the first two months of the year. Data from the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System indicates that in the first two months of 2023, the volume of transactions being made on mobile phones rose by 70 percent. 

CGTN 

Related stories: Video - Supreme court suspends currency swap deadline in Nigeria

Critical mistakes made by central bank of Nigeria in cash swap

 

 

Monday, March 27, 2023

Banknotes Dispensed in Nigeria to Reduce Three-Month Cash Crunch

Nigeria’s central bank increased the supply of banknotes to lenders to end shortages that have hampered individual and business transactions and crippled the cash-based economy since January.

Most lenders including United Bank for Africa Plc, Zenith Bank Plc and FBN Holdings Plc called in staff on Saturday and Sunday to help customers access cash in banks or via automated teller machines.

The disbursement, in compliance with a central bank directive, is being monitored “personally” by Governor Godwin Emefiele, according to spokesman Isa Abdulmumin. Residents should have unfettered access to cash within the weekly withdrawal limits and terms, he said by phone from the nation’s capital, Abuja.

Africa’s most populous nation was hit by a cash shortage late last year after the central bank began replacing old 200-, 500- and 1,000-naira notes with new ones in a bid to mop up excess liquidity, promote electronic-based payments and rein in inflation. Some state governors challenged the program in court and the Supreme Court extended a Feb. 10 deadline set to phase out old notes until year-end.

Although the court ordered the central bank to redistribute old notes amounting to 2.2 trillion naira, or 70% of cash in circulation, to ease shortage, residents still struggled to access banknotes as of last week as few banks and ATMs had supplies. It prompted the Nigerian Labour Congress, the umbrella workers union, to call for protests at central bank offices from March 29.

The improved distribution is expected to balance the supply and demand for cash in the economy and halt further impediments to personal and business transactions. About 90% of transactions in Nigeria’s informal economy are conducted using cash.

Citizens withdrew cash from automated teller machines in the business district in Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos on Monday without the usual long queues. “After what I went through in the past to withdraw my own money, what I see here today is like magic; it’s a big relief,” said Adebisi Erimipe, who withdrew 10,000 naira ($21.69) in old 500 naira notes within few minutes at Unity Bank Plc’s ATM located on the Island in Lagos.

The central bank will keep weekly withdrawal limits at 500,000 naira for individuals and 5 million naira for companies to discourage residents from holding excess money, Abdulmumin said. A processing fee of 3% for individuals and 5% for companies is charged for those seeking to withdraw cash above the limits. 

By Emele Onu, Bloomberg

Related stories: Critical mistakes made by central bank of Nigeria in cash swap

Video - Supreme court suspends currency swap deadline in Nigeria

Friday, February 24, 2023

16 States in Nigeria sue central bank over withdrawal of old banknotes



16 states in Nigeria asked the Supreme Court to force the central bank to extend by six months the use of old banknotes, whose withdrawal from circulation has caused cash shortages ahead of weekend elections. The shortage of naira notes has angered citizens with some of them attacking banks and burning cash-dispensing machines.

CGTN 

Related stories: Cash shortage in Nigeria due to redesigned currency push

Video - New currency in Nigeria to affect small businesses according to World Bank

 

 

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Anger and chaos outside banks in Nigeria

People in Nigeria have taken to sleeping outside banks. They want to be among the first in line to get notes from the cash machine once it is loaded up in the morning.

A lack of newly designed naira notes has led to a cash shortage and a growing sense of anxiety among those desperate to get hold of their money in a country where 40% of the population don't have bank accounts.

The Supreme Court has even become involved and has ordered that the deadline to hand in old notes be extended but this has made little difference.

People here have long been used to the periodic bouts of fuel shortages leading to long lines of cars snaking from the petrol stations. But now long lines of frustrated, confused and angry people have become a common sight outside banks as the country builds up to a presidential election at the end of the month.

"I have not eaten today," says Abraham Osundiran, 36, as he stands in one of two queues at a bank in Ikoyi, a district in the country's main commercial hub, Lagos.

He has had to miss work at a construction company for a second day because he does not have the cash to pay the taxi fare. Some Nigerians have embraced digital payments, but many still rely heavily on cash.

"I don't have any cash. I've had to skip breakfast so I could come here, and I don't know what I will eat for the rest of the day."

It is a similar situation for many others.

"It's painful. I can't go to the market, because they want cash. Buses want cash - now I have to trek everywhere," hairdresser Lilian Ineh, 26, tells the BBC from her salon.

"There's no money to buy stock, so I have less products to sell. There are even less customers. Usually on a Saturday I have a minimum of five."

Last Saturday, she only had two.

Nigerians were told last October that the old notes were being replaced with new notes and they were encouraged to deposit any cash savings in the bank.

"They made us put all our money into our accounts, and now we can't access it. It's unbearable," says Osarenoma Kolawole, 40. She works in telesales, but has not been able to access her salary since getting paid last week.

"The last time I went to the shops, I had to buy eggs instead of fish - that really hurt me - not the food, but having to buy what I didn't want to, just because the banks won't let me get my money."

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said it redesigned the higher denomination notes - 200, 500 and 1,000 naira - to replace the dirty cash in circulation, to tackle inflation, curb counterfeiting and promote a cashless society.

It hoped the redesign would bring some of the money being hoarded by individuals and companies back into the financial system.

The reform has created something like a cashless society - but not in the way the CBN had planned.

People have been finding it difficult to make online payments and transfers. Analysts say the infrastructure to support a digital system is not robust enough.

"The whole idea was to limit how much cash people have access to, in order to encourage them to make digital payments, so they [CBN] can monitor where money goes," says Paul Alaje, a senior economist at management consultants SPM Professionals.

"But Nigerian banks don't have the capacity or structure to make digital payments work seamlessly."

The CBN has not said whether the shortages are deliberate.

"The government has been trying to move the country into a cashless economy for ages," argues policy analyst and economist Yemi Makinde.

"Its intention is good, but it is just not feasible, the banking systems were not ready and Nigeria is just used to cash."

When announcing the redesign, the CBN said the new notes would begin circulating from 15 December and the old notes would cease to be legal tender at the end of January.

The bank then extended the deadline to last Friday. But the Supreme Court stepped in and suspended this deadline but the queues outside banks remain.

"The only way this judgment would work is to release old notes back into system to meet the shortage [but] doing that will only take us back to square one," says economist Mr Alaje.

Accusations of hoarding


Many have also blamed individual bank branches.

Firstly, they were still giving out the old notes rather than new ones, even up to the week of the initial deadline, thereby keeping them in circulation.

Secondly, agents from the country's anti-fraud body, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, raided some bank branches and arrested managers who were accused of hoarding the new notes in vaults rather than putting them in cash machines and giving them to customers.

"The banks are not doing a good job distributing the money. Bank managers have been keeping a lot of the money aside for people with connections and for the rich, misusing the central bank's policy," Dr Makinde says.

As a consequence, the lack of new naira notes has hit those who primarily deal with cash day-to-day, like market sellers and hawkers.

Iya Ruka, 52, sells plantains at a market in Ojodu Berger, Lagos. She has had to adapt by accepting bank transfers - but this has not helped her when she needs money.

"All my customers are saying they don't have cash, they will pay using a bank transfer, but I go to the bank and there's no cash for me to collect. So what do I do?"

Further down the street, Kingsley, who only gave his first name, sells mobile phone accessories.

The 27-year-old told me he has hardly sold anything in the last few days.

"People only pay [by] transfer. If I want to get home, I need to go to a Point of Sale (POS) to get money and they charge a lot now."

POS vendors are individuals standing at street corners who have a card machine and can make transfers for people, but often charge a commission.

They have been accused of fleecing ordinary people by charging extortionate amounts for cash withdrawals.

'Things will get better'

One vendor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, defended the need to charge extra.

"I queued for an entire day at a bank to get new notes and old notes. That's why they must pay, because we queue," says the 25-year-old, who runs a kiosk in Lekki.

She adds that she is not sure how much longer she will be able to keep up the business, as the banks run dry.

"Some customers can get angry and nearly violent - I just avoid looking up at them. They forget I'm suffering as well, like now, I have to trek for an hour home, and I have only been eating garri [cassava flakes]."

CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele has said he has taken steps to get more of the new notes into the system with the aim of easing the situation.

The chaos has become a major election issue with calls for President Muhammadu Buhari to take action to avoid losing votes for the ruling All Progressives Congress.

Despite the crisis, there are a few people, especially those who managed to plan well ahead, who have not felt the crunch just yet.

Ruth Okeke, 35, runs a convenience shop in Omole. She says even though her number of customers has dropped, she is not worried.

"I know things will get better. The bankers are the ones making money from all this panic, but there will be new notes soon, everybody should relax."

By Simi Jolaoso, BBC

Related stories: Video - Supreme court suspends currency swap deadline in Nigeria

Fuel and cash shortage in Nigeria rile voters ahead of election

Video - Nigerian banks face a shortage of new naira notes

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

JPMorgan wins London oil trial in which Nigeria sought $1.7 bln

JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) has won a London High Court battle against Nigeria, which was seeking $1.7 billion in damages over the U.S. bank's role in a disputed 2011 oilfield deal.

JPMorgan said the judgment reflected its commitment to acting with high professional standards everywhere it operates, while Nigeria said it was disappointed and would review the judgment carefully before considering its next steps.

The civil case, which was heard earlier this year, relates to the purchase by Shell (SHEL.L) and Eni (ENI.MI) of Nigeria's OPL 245 offshore oilfield.

Nigeria had alleged JPMorgan was "grossly negligent" in its transfer of funds paid by the energy majors to a company linked to the country's disgraced former oil minister Dan Etete, as per instructions received from Nigerian government officials.

Nigeria now says those officials were party to a fraudulent scheme.

According to Nigeria's legal argument, the transactions put JPMorgan in breach of its Quincecare duty, which obliges banks to disregard a customer's instructions if following those instructions might facilitate a fraud against that customer.

JP Morgan rejected the legal argument, putting the emphasis on its primary duty to comply promptly with payment instructions from its customer, and also contested some of the factual elements put forward by Nigeria.

London High Court Judge Sara Cockerill said in a 137-page ruling issued on Tuesday that no Quincecare breach had occurred.

JPMorgan said the outcome reflected "how we are prepared to robustly defend our actions and reputation when they are called into question".

The Nigerian government said it would continue its fight against fraud and corruption and work to recover funds for the people of Nigeria.

Campaign group Spotlight on Corruption described the ruling as "a huge setback in the fight against corruption", saying it gave a "free pass" to banks who ignored red flags.

The damages sought included cash sent to Etete's company Malabu Oil and Gas, around $875 million paid in three instalments in 2011 and 2013, plus interest, taking the total to over $1.7 billion.

Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha had awarded licence OPL 245 to a company Etete owned in 1998.

Subsequent Nigerian administrations had challenged Etete's rights to the field over many years until a deal to resolve the impasse via a sale to Shell and Eni was struck in 2011.

The transaction is also at the centre of ongoing legal action in Italy.

By Sinead Cruise and Estelle Shirbon

Reuters

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Nigeria is quietly rewriting fintech’s rulebook

It all started with a tweet on New Year’s Day, 2016. Joshua Chibueze, a computer scientist and entrepreneur based in Lagos, Nigeria, floated the idea of digitising the kolo, a wooden box similar to a piggy bank, used in many Nigerian homes to save money.

Chibueze had heard that, with enough persistence, people could set aside significant sums, but when he started using a kolo himself he realised how easy it was for upwardly mobile young Nigerians like him to forget – or simply lack the discipline – to save every single day. Worse: as Nigeria’s economy was getting increasingly cashless, an old box did not sound like an effective saving device – and was a security liability.

Hence the idea of a digital kolo. Odunayo Eweniyi, a fellow entrepreneur (and Twitter friend of Chibueze’s), was the first to reply to his tweet on the subject. “The conversation progressed from digitising to automating the kolo,” Eweniyi recalls. The pair teamed up and – alongside a third co-founder, Somto Ifezue – built an online savings platform to help medium-to-low-earning Nigerians save small amounts daily, weekly, monthly, or annually. Launched as PiggyBank.ng in February 2016, today it is known as PiggyVest.

Marketing solely on social media for the first couple of years, PiggyVest was able to help Nigerians sign up easily using their smartphones, automate savings and earn interest, with rates between six and ten per cent. By the end of 2018, PiggyVest had helped over 53,000 users save close to a billion Nigerian naira (£2,000,000).

In 2015, two per cent of Nigerians controlled 90 per cent of banks’ total deposits, according to the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, a government-backed financial agency. One year later, Nigerian financial inclusion advocacy group EFInA found that only 36.9 million adult Nigerians – out of a population of over 195 million – had access to a bank account. Nigeria was grappling with a huge unbanked population and PiggyVest set to cater to this demographic blending technology and traditional saving methods.

“The thing about the unbanked is that they’re actually banked, they’re just not formally banked,” says Eweniyi. “Banking is necessary to them but the banks themselves haven’t proven to be.” She believes that Nigeria’s financial exclusion problem will be solved by working with people rather than offering top-down solutions.

That is why Piggy`vest has decided to borrow well-tested models from Africa’s financial history: after its debut as a digital kolo, in May 2018 the company launched a new feature – called Smart Target – modelled af

ter the traditional saving practice of ajo. First recorded in the 19th century, but rumoured to have been around for longer among the Yoruba ethnic group, an ajo consists of a group of colleagues, friends, or religious peers, each contributing the same amount of money at an agreed frequency to hit a financial target. At the end of each savings cycle – typically, a month – one member of the group receives the entire saving pot; the ajo goes on until everyone has received their payout.

“My mum belonged to at least four ajo groups, one of which was at the university where she was a lecturer,” says Eweniyi, whose parents were both academics. “My parents relied on ajo to pay their way through our education and this is how most middle-class families I know survived.”

PiggyVest’s take on ajo, however, tweaks the tradition to fit the times: Smart Target lets people save towards a common goal together as an online community, but unlike ajo, users are in control of how much they contribute and where the payout goes.

PiggyVest is just one of a new breed of Nigerian fintech companies. “Companies like PiggyVest have moved to push savings and budgeting consciousness, by gamifying the process and including a reward system for users who follow through,” says Modupe Odele, a lawyer and startup consultant based in Washington, DC. She predicts that in the near future, Nigeria’s fintech industry will start broadening its scope.

“We have payments, we have savings and these are great, but there's still a lot of financial technology that is ripe for exploration,” Odele says. 

By Kiki Mordi

Wired

Related stories: Nigerians Are Using Bitcoin to Bypass Trade Hurdles With China

Why Bitcoin has been so successful in Nigeria

The re-inventors of banking in Nigeria

Friday, April 30, 2021

Nigeria's central bank sacks entire board of First Bank of Nigeria

Nigeria's central bank on Thursday sacked the entire board of First Bank of Nigeria and appointed new directors, the regulator said in a statement, citing the previous board's "sweeping changes" without alerting regulatory authorities.

First Bank of Nigeria (FBN) did not respond to calls seeking comment.

The bank had been in "grave financial condition" when the regulator become involved in its management "to maintain financial stability" in 2016, giving it authority over FBN's operations, the central bank said.

The sacking of the board on Thursday was done "in order to preserve stability of the bank, so as to protect minority shareholders and depositors," said the regulator.

"The actions being taken are meant to strengthen the bank and position it as a banking industry giant," it said.

Nigeria's central bank has powers to remove bank executives and used them during the 2008/2009 global financial crisis when it sacked nine CEOs at banks that were under-capitalised.

The regulator in 2016 sacked top executives of Skye Bank over capital adequacy issues, having in 2015 given three commercial banks time to recapitalise after they failed to hit a minimum capital adequacy rate of 10%.

By Chijioke Ohuocha

Reuters

Monday, November 26, 2018

The re-inventors of banking in Nigeria

Key contributors to the growth of the Nigerian economy, they have redefined banking by leveraging technology and connecting people to market. From just £100 in his bank account, Pascal Dozie has built a business empire his son Uzoma is taking to the future.

It’s always a difficult proposition, handing over the reins of a business you have painstakingly built ground-up. But for Pascal Dozie, Nigeria’s self-made investment and finance guru, there could not be a better successor than his eldest son, Uzoma Dozie, Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Diamond Bank. But Uzoma has learned from the best.

The rise of Pascal Dozie can outrival any rags-to-riches Dickensian tale. He gained a fortune through tenacity, hard work and wit, on a long and difficult road from Owerri in Imo State where he was born in 1939. His entrepreneurial journey began against the backdrop of a Nigeria marred by the bloody Biafran war waged between 1967 and 1970 that saw over 30,000 Igbo lives lost. Pascal, at the time, was finishing his degree at The London School of Economics where he shared a class and rubbed shoulders with The Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, who dropped out to form the English rock band.

The war back home meant he had to find alternative means of making a living. Learning to be independent since the loss of his father when he was only 15, Pascal’s major influence was his mother who owned a bakery.
As a young man, he found himself on the streets of Uganda cutting his teeth in the exchange business until the Idi Amin coup truncated his work.

“When Amin took over, we were no longer wanted, so we had to come back to Nigeria but there was no money to come back home with.”

Pascal and his wife were unemployed and as a result, the couple planned to relocate to the United States (US) in search of greener pastures. But they changed their plans in the last minute due to his mother’s ill-health and her wish to be closer to her first grandson, Uzoma.

Pascal had to quickly find another way to make ends meet. He decided to start a consulting firm, the African Development Consulting Group, where he worked for multinationals like Nestle and Pfizer.

“My first objective was survival and of course I had an ambition. You set up a company, you want that company to grow; you want it to be robust and profitable. Being in consulting was a tricky affair because you have a lot of receivables. It was a hustle job. A hustle to get payment and a hustle to do the job all the time.”

Then there was the issue of rudimentary communication systems to contend with.

“There were no phones. At one point in time, I had to meet someone in Sokoto, and I boarded a flight to go there. Lo and behold, in the queue boarding that plane was the man I was going to see, catching a flight to another destination. So he apologized because there was no way for him to tell me not to come. So he asked me if it was possible to wait for two days. We had no choice and we found a hotel and waited for the man to come back. If there was any delay, there was nothing we could do but keep waiting until he showed up,” says Pascal.

Slowly but surely, his business began to prosper, but Pascal had even bigger aspirations. During the days of his consulting business, he conducted a feasibility study of banks and unearthed a hidden opportunity. But that was the easy part. At the time, Nigerian law stipulated that to set up a bank, no one single person could have more than 5% shareholding in the bank and the firm’s shareholders must be representative of Nigerians from all over the country.

“Now the problem was how do you find them? That was a major challenge. Once they are found, you are now dealing with so many different people from different backgrounds, which means a lot of time; there were a lot of quarrels. We traveled around all of Nigeria to find people who will invest in the bank.”

Secondly, Pascal had noticed traders from the remote villages in the east of the country, where he grew up, faced the problem of carrying huge bundles of cash when they traveled to Lagos on business, making them prone to robberies. To make matters worse, there were a number of shortcomings in the banking system. For example, to deposit money in a bank, one would have to wait long, sometimes queuing up for almost four hours before a single transaction.

“And to cash a cheque was also difficult. You could go to the bank and they will give you a number in the queue. You could then leave the bank, go to the shop and do so many errands that by the time you come back, your number would still not have been called. There was that gap in service,” says Pascal.

With a passion for economic development, he believed that without a strong financial sector, the Nigerian economy was not going to develop.

“You need a robust financial system to get the economy working, so I said ok, ‘why don’t we try looking at this and provide a solution’. I said ‘if we could get a bank to mitigate against all the things we are lacking, then we can create value for businesses and also contribute to the economic development of Nigeria’,” says Pascal, who was featured on the cover of FORBES AFRICA in October 2012.

Meanwhile, Uzoma, the eldest of his five sons, was contemplating which career he was going to pursue. The choices boiled down to engineering, medicine or law. He had witnessed the tough early days of his father’s entrepreneurial journey.

“I think my parents were hustling when I was born. We were five boys and I remember we lived at 27 Commercial Avenue, which was also my father’s office. It was a three-bedroom flat and I remember two of the rooms were offices and one was the bedroom for all of us. My dad was a consultant, so he didn’t have a fixed job then and I think my mother had a more stable job than him. Because they were hustling, life was very practical,” says Uzoma.

Where his father is assertive and confident, with each word measured and delivered as though he was giving a keynote address, Uzoma’s youthful exuberance is infectious. But there are similarities too. Pascal is a gentleman in every sense of the word, who loves Mozart and Bach, while Uzoma also has a calm down-to-earth demeanor.

Watching both father and son speak is like looking at two old friends catch up over drinks. Affectionately calling his father ‘PD’, there is an air of reverence and respect for the man who has orchestrated the Dozie legacy and built a multi-million dollar empire from a modest consulting firm, today spanning banking, private equity and telecommunications. Pascal commands his investment and finance empire through the family-owned investment company Kunoch, which pours money into everything, from power generation to gas processing, oil exploration, real estate and banking.

However, for Uzoma, banking was not his first calling. After some initial soul-searching, he opted to be a doctor and that journey led him to the United Kingdom (UK).

After studying Chemistry at the University of Reading, he pursued a masters in Chemical Research at University College London (UCL) before completing an MBA at Imperial College London.

A serendipitous recession in the UK meant Uzoma was unable to find a job, and decided to relocate to Nigeria to enrol into the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme set up by the government.

It involves Nigerian graduates in nation-building and the development of the country. Pascal, through his contacts, secured a role for Uzoma at Guaranty Trust Bank, which was the start of the latter’s love affair with banking.

“When I left university in the UK, I had a lot of credit from banks. I had a credit card, I had a debit card, I had a cheque guarantee card, I was using ATM and when I came back to Nigeria, it was like going back into time. None of those services existed. You had a chequebook, which may be, only one of the new generation banks offered, and one of the motivations or aspirations for me with Diamond Bank was trying to deliver in the Nigerian market those services which I was used to in the UK,” says Uzoma.

Both father and son fervently believe in the power of technology to drive efficiency in the financial sector. The first thing Pascal did to solve the issue of carrying cash over long distances was to set up the Diamond Integrated Banking System (DIBS).

This meant that you could carry a chequebook instead of cash and when you came into the bank, you received your cash. It may sound pretty easy and standard now but at the time in Nigeria’s history, it was revolutionary.

“Nigeria has come a long way. The area that we have not had much success is on our political front. There has been a lot of progress on the economic side; [but] individually, almost everybody is working in silos. But until we have that political will to get the economy to where it ought to be, we are just paying lip service.”

He sold the consulting business to raise the capital to start Diamond Bank. Soon, another opportunity presented itself to Pascal, this time in the telecoms industry. A South African company was looking to set up shop in Africa’s largest economy and Pascal saw in this an opportunity too good to pass up.

“So many companies were interested in the MTN project. The Nigerians didn’t know much about what it was about. All they knew was that there was this new way of communicating, which was by mobile telephones, and nobody knew what that was all about. It was one of the first few transparent projects the government ever conducted. The government practically vetted all the shareholders of the company,” says Pascal.

The South Africans wanted to pump millions into a 60% stake in MTN Nigeria, with Nigerians owning 40%. Pascal managed to raise a 20% stake in the new company. But before the deal could close, he says his name was published in the newspapers for unethical trading.

“The MTN people came to me to say ‘we do not want anything to do with you again’. Some mischievous people accused me of playing both sides and the main fact that I was double dipping would have cost us the project. So they wrote a letter to me and I didn’t reply. So they didn’t want to see me, I was more or less like an outcast. So I was not even there the last day of the bidding,” says Pascal.

“It was later on that the chairman of MTN was going back to South Africa and he met that company I was supposed to be involved in and they asked about me and the man said he didn’t know who I was. Then they realized that somebody was trying to be mischievous and they came back to me and apologized,” says Pascal, and the rest as they say is history. Today, the company is one of the most successful in Nigeria and Pascal maintains his position as chairman.

The apple did not fall far from the tree. Uzoma religiously preserves the organizational culture, using new technology to democratize the dissemination of financial services to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Pascal had always put employees in the saddle, empowering them to take decisions. That philosophy has worked well for the organization. Furthermore, his decision to realign the structure of the organization and create accessibility for tech-savvy millennials has helped the bank maintain its position as one of the leading financial services institutions in the country.

Uzoma has had varied roles within the organization, starting as an assistant manager and head of the bank’s oil and gas group, where he expanded the oil and gas businesses. One of the things Uzoma also pioneered was leveraging the power of mobile apps to make transactions easier for customers. “We used mobile apps to stop people from coming to the branches and put everything you wanted to do in the bank, apart from withdrawing cash at the bank, on the mobile app. Now, it’s a platform where it’s beyond banking and one of the new things we are doing is to provide a relationship officer and democratize banking so that even the guy at the bottom of the pyramid will get premium banking services and we can only do that through technology,” says Uzoma.

Next, the bank began automating the customer transaction experience by enabling customers to do self-service. Robots were introduced to reduce the workload and allow humans to concentrate on the things they are good at such as creativity and innovation.

“We have eight million people who use their mobile phones to do banking and we have a partnership with MTN. I see Diamond Bank as a platform to help people connect to market. When you talk to people we helped open a bank account into the market place, the first thing they will tell you is that ‘I can now save to take my children to school, I can now save to improve my business’. Diamond Bank is a platform for transformation by connecting people and their market,” says Uzoma.

The way the company has managed to achieve this is by leveraging technology and redefining the business model, which goes beyond banking and coming up with a sharing and collaborating approach as well.

“If I want to lend to a customer, I need to know much more than his financial record, I need to know about his non-financial records so it gives me a better understanding. We use other platforms to connect and engage with our audience like Diamond TV and we also get feedback from what our people want and what the trends are,” adds Uzoma.

Under his leadership, the bank has become one of the most-successful middle-market banks. According to Uzoma, this was as a result of understanding customer cash flows which made it easier to lend to them.

“I don’t know when was the last time I went into a banking hall to do a transaction. Young people have a good opportunity in the tech sector. I would like to see Nigerians developing software and looking at it from our own perspective and being original. One of the things I found in our financial system is the banking system is not technologically advanced like some of the banks we have in Europe,” says Pascal.

“We can use technology to solve a lot of problems in agriculture and a lot of problems in banking. Even deploying technology in a social and economic area. For example, our population, VAT registration, national identity and so many applications. People are working in various silos, why can’t we get all these systems to be coordinated? If you go to Dubai and you enter a taxi and you lose something, you can retrieve it. Once you enter a taxi, it is entered in a central location and everything is harmonized.”

They are a team that work well together. Uzoma is a tech visionary who believes in the power of technology to provide opportunities to leapfrog as a people, and he is relentless in pursuing that goal.

For Nigeria to harness that power, however, there has to be effective leadership to create impact and transformation. According to Uzoma: “We have everything we require in Nigeria to really leverage technology, but we haven’t been able to do that. We need the leadership to put the policy, regulation and legislation in place to help us achieve this. One of the things I am passionate about is educating investors to invest in Nigerian businesses. People are going outside to get investors from venture capital from the US and in 10 years’ time, we are going to find that we have a few Nigerian companies that are very successful globally but they will be owned by foreign companies because Nigerian investors who had the capacity did not understand what they are letting go,” says Uzoma.

Pascal echoes his sentiments. “You will not find any company owned by Nigerians being managed by the third generation or fourth generation as such but you will find that among Indians in Nigeria, and the Lebanese in Nigeria. But ours [Nigerians] have been short-term because the first generation sets up the business, then the next generation tries to develop it and the third generation squanders it.” These days, that has been Pascal’s real focus. He believes in order for Nigeria to effectively compete globally, there has to be a focus on succession-planning. At 79, he is full of life and bursting with ideas. His goal is to create an awareness of building generational wealth through family offices. This dynamic father-son duo is here to stay and set a sterling example for African business.

From modest beginnings – just £100 in his bank account in Lagos when he started – Pascal has built an empire his son is determined to take to Africa’s glorious future.