Key stakeholders in Nigeria’s financial sector would engage in a robust round table discussion on government’s key policy which centers around inclusive financial system that will cover all strata of the society.

The experts drawn from key private sector organisations and regulatory agencies would gather at the inaugural conference on ‘Financial Inclusion’ being hosted by STANMEG Communications, publishers of Oriental News Nigeria.

Sunday Thomas, the Commissioner for Insurance, who had earlier confirmed participation of the National Insurance Commission, NAICOM, also endorsed the theme of the conference, an initiative he said is a major policy drive which NAICOM is passionate about.

Given this endorsement, NAICOM would be joining other key stakeholders from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the National Communications Commission (NCC) and First Bank Plc which will be part of discussants at the confab.

According to a release issued by the organisers, the conference is being organised given that over the past couple of years, the Federal Government and stakeholders in the financial sector have had to deal with expanding financial services to large community of underserved population and dealing with resilience challenges brought about by the confluence of events that have taken place.

They have had to cope with spiralling financial services costs, restricted coverage and dwindling capacity and limits in key lines such low Internet knowledge of certain segments of the society like market men and women, artisans and some physically challenged persons.

Financial services now going digital and dearth of knowledge and rising levels of data and associated costs of telecom services brings huge questions about the effectiveness of the initiative and interruption coverage when combined with the supply chain crunch.

Most underserved groups are demanding cost reductions and our challenging environment peculiarity is part of why the conference is holding to allow stakeholders take a collective view on how to create a suitable path to advance the initiative.

STANMEG Communications using rigorous research tools observed huge gap in the financial services system with some members of other social strata excluded.
Since 2005, the Nigerian financial services sector has witnessed increasing activities by both the government and the regulatory authorities aimed at deliberately promoting policies that are intended to grow financial inclusion.

The CBN has been at the vanguard of encouraging and supporting products that are specifically targeted at the low income and financially excluded, while the government have focused more on both interventionist financing arrangements and building institutions and frameworks that promotes financial inclusion.

Financial exclusion has significant outcomes for the real sector as lack of access to credit can be a disincentive to entrepreneurship, investment, and economic growth.

The principle of financial inclusion has assumed greater level of importance in recent times due to its perceived importance as a driver of economic growth. Giving access to the hundreds of millions of men and women who are presently excluded from financial services would provide the possibilities for the creation of a large depository of savings, investable funds, investment and therefore global wealth generation.

In other words, access to financial services that are well suited for low-income earners promote enormous capital accumulation, credit creation and investment boom.

The low-income earners constitute the largest proportion of the population and so control enormous chunk of the economy’s idle fund albeit held in small amounts in the hands of each of the several million members of this group. Harnessing and accumulating these resources provides a huge source of cheap long-term investable capital.

One of our findings is that all efforts are currently challenged on how to ensure that the poor rural dwellers are carried along considering the lack of financial sophistication among this segment of the Nigerian society due to the general low level of financial literacy.

It is on this that ‘we are organising the conference as advocacy measure by bringing experts, policy makers and other key agencies of government in the vanguard of closing the seeming gap to proffer solution on challenges mitigating the initiative.’

The conference will help to advance inclusive financial systems for the identified groups which include Community Based People, Artisans, Low Income Groups, Market Men and Women, Special Persons (Disability Group) that undertake various vocations as well as displaced persons.

The theme of the conference is “Engaging with Critical Grassroots Groups to Develop Effective Financial Inclusion Initiative” with sub-theme ‘Identifying Key Action Areas For Financial Inclusion Strategy’ and is scheduled to hold on June 16, 2022 at Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos.

The Conference Chairman is Dr. Uju Ogubunka, Chairman, Bank Customers Association of Nigeria (BCAN), while the Guest Speaker is Mallam Garba Kurfi, Managing Director, APT Securities and Funds Limited.

• Fragmentation in the Nigerian payment space has served more as a constraint than an enabler; Squad by GTCO positions to lead with innovation and efficiency  

Without a doubt, digital payment is the next growth frontier for financial services. Amongst other extenuating factors, growing digitalisation, mobile penetration, and evolving consumer behaviour have accelerated the shift towards cashless thereby creating entirely new business models and solutions built around payments.

Given the key role digitalisation plays in the financial lives of many people today, electronic payments are at the core of the payment ecosystem. As is the case with all things economic, Nigeria remains a most attractive market.

Over the past years, we have seen largely foreign investors make a play to participate in the Nigerian technology and financial sector with considerable investments in FINTECH companies creating so-called “unicorns” of these establishments. This is helping to generate needed cohesion within the payment landscape and putting it at the forefront of innovation.

The gains from the payment sector will serve to spur the global remittance industry as well as enhance financial inclusion. Increasingly, it is expected that newer, more efficient form factors and product offerings will look to enhance the digital payment experience for consumers and merchants alike.

Despite this trend, a more critical assessment of the payment industry shows that existing FINTECHs are merely scratching the surface of the payment landscape and its massive potential for financial inclusion. If anything, the fragmentation of the merchant-facing payments value chain has served to dampen the massive prospects of this sector. Available research point to the fact that asides security and privacy concerns, a major challenge presently facing the mobile payment ecosystem is the high level of market fragmentation as seen in multiplicity of platforms and the different service configurations on offer.

With consumer adoption stalling, mobile payments still represent a small portion of total consumer payments. The complexities around payments and the rapid evolution of merchant services require a re-evaluation of business focus and value propositions.

• In Comes Squad by GTCO 

It is against this backdrop that the launch of Squad, a full-service digital payment company conceived by Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc (GTCO Plc), is a most welcome development. For one thing, GTCO Plc is renowned for its strong corporate governance culture, bias for innovation and superior financial performance.

Few financial institutions in Nigeria, and indeed Africa, can boast of GTCO’s impressive credentials. From its humble beginnings in 1990 as a pureplay banking institution, the company has morphed into a fully-fledged financial services powerhouse in a little over three decades.

Under-pinning this remarkably successful transformation is GTCO’s rich history of firsts: from pioneering industry-wide innovations in Online/Mobile Banking, USSD Banking, Instant Card issuance, and Fingerprint Banking to creating free business platforms to support small and medium-sized business owners in the food and fashion industries and revolutionising consumer lending with QuickCredit, GTCO has differentiated itself from other financial institutions by a mile.

With the launch of Squad, GTCO Plc aims to deploy its trademark efficient operations and innovative capacity to drive adoption in payment services and enhance financial inclusion. With the overarching goal to be the most efficient off-line and online merchant acquiring platform in all of Africa, Squad is well positioned to serve four important enterprise verticals namely: micro- businesses (kiosks), online sellers, digital natives, and corporates.   

• Reinventing the In-store Payment Experience, No Longer Limited to POS 

Squad’s top offerings will include a payment gateway and the Soft POS. While most are familiar with the functionalities of payment gateways, the Soft POS solution is as cutting-edge as it is simple-to-use.

The Soft POS is a multiform-factor white-label solution that enables a smartphone to function as a merchant acceptance device. Essentially, the Soft POS allows any mobile phone with the NFC feature to be used as a point-of-sale.

While this service is enjoying growing acceptance and use in other parts of the world like America, Europe, and Asia, Squad will be amongst the very first financial payments service in Africa to introduce this unique payment functionality.

Merchants who have traditionally accepted cash payments or struggled with the sub-optimal nature of physical POS terminals, now have a simpler and more secure way to manage their transactions.

The solution effectively addresses the needs of micro and small businesses as it provides a cost-efficient card acceptance solution as well as complete visibility of merchant transactions making reconciliation and decision making faster and easier.

With Soft POS, the consumer experience is elevated as it facilitates line-busting to streamline check out queues and eliminates friction. How does the Soft POS work? Quite simple and fast. Sellers can start accepting contactless payments in just few minutes by downloading the app from Google Play Store and completing the registration process.

Squad would also be offering other high-impact, value-adding services to merchants and corporates in various sectors of the economy to enhance their business operations and propel wide-scale growth.     

• What Makes Squad Unique? 

As the name suggests, Squad denotes the power of a TEAM. The team at Squad is peopled by young, dynamic professionals who have imbibed GTCO Plc’s culture of innovation and efficiency to power next-generation payment solutions.

If GTCO’s track-record of trailblazing achievements is anything to go by, Squad will in no time set the marker for merchant and customer fulfillment in payments. Squad is backed by a successful ‘Proudly African, Truly International” brand in GTCO Plc and is run by well-trained, digital-savvy minds with a keen understanding of market needs and trends.

This is markedly different from what currently obtains where one or two founders set up and struggle to balance vision with ambition, and ultimately, falter off-course.

With no less a visionary than Segun Agbaje leading the Holding Company, we can be sure that values like transparency and integrity, which have become synonymous with the Guaranty Trust brand, will come on to define the payment space resulting in more clarity of purpose and extensive trust in the reliability of digital solutions.

At a recent Forum to review GTCO Plc’s prior year financial statements and projections for the 2022 financial year, Mr. Agbaje pledged to disclose the performance of the Group’s new businesses on a quarterly basis.

This is a rarity in today’s clime. It is exactly what one would expect from a brand looking to champion Africa’s growth as it serves to enhance competitiveness and value creation for all stakeholders. You would recall that the Group recently started Guaranty Trust Fund Managers Limited and Guaranty Trust Pension Managers Limited to compete in the Asset Management and Pension sectors. These, alongside the new payment company, will certainly add to the viability of GTCO Plc long-term.  

• The Future of Payment is Digital   

To reference one of Segun Agbaje’s seminal submissions, ‘the future of payments is digital.’ The launch of Squad is timeous if Nigeria, and indeed Africa, must ride the wave of continued cash displacement and go on to drive digital payment adoption and financial inclusion. And, if there is a question of how to radically transform Africa’s payment space, Squad is the answer.

Culled from Proshare 

Business conditions in Nigeria’s private sector strengthened in May, but the rate of improvement slowed from April. Softer uplifts were recorded in output, new orders, purchasing activity and input inventories. That said, new orders continued to rise sharply which prompted a quicker expansion in headcounts. In turn, sentiment improved with companies also hoping that fruitful marketing campaigns would support output growth over the next 12 months.

Sharp price pressures were once again evident, however, with overall input price inflation among the quickest in the survey’s more than eight-year history. Firms passed on

higher expenses and sought to increase profit margins with output price inflation quickening in May. The headline figure derived from the survey is the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI). Readings above 50.0 signal an improvement in business conditions on the previous month, while readings below 50.0 show a deterioration.

At 53.9 in May, down from 55.8 in April, the headline PMI signalled a twenty-third successive monthly improvement in business conditions in Nigeria’s private sector. New orders rose sharply in May, albeit at a softer pace than in April.

Firms raised their output levels, extending the current run of output growth to 18 months. All four of the monitored sub-sectors recorded marked expansions, led by the manufacturing sector. Services, wholesale & retail and agriculture followed behind, respectively. Firms continued to raise purchasing activity, with expansions now seen in each of the last 23 months.

The overall rate of growth was sharp but eased to an eight-month low amid elevated costs. Nevertheless, companies were committed to raising their inventories as part of efforts to protect against future price hikes.

Despite the latest moderation in output growth, firms were optimistic that their output levels would expand over the next 12 months. In fact, the degree of optimism improved from April.

Firms reported that business expansions would support growth in output and as a result added to their headcounts. Staffing levels have risen in each of the last 16 months with the latest uptick the third-quickest in this sequence.

Larger workforces and higher prices for fuel, raw materials, transportation and other inputs led to another substantial increase in overall input prices in May.

Moreover, firms raised staff wages at the third-strongest rate in the series history. Higher expenses were passed on to clients with selling price inflation quickening in May. Lead times shortened to the greatest extent for five months.

As a result, firms received inputs in a timely manner and were able to reduce their backlogs, as has been the case in each month over the last two years.

Sterling Bank Plc has launched a new and innovative digital product, known as the Imperium Platform, in a bid to connect consumers and providers of renewable energy (solar solutions) as a viable solution to Nigeria’s electricity crisis.

The Imperium Platform was launched following the unveiling of the Nigerian electricity industry report entitled, “Powering Nigeria: How Solar Energy Can Become a Sustainable Electricity Alternative.”

The report was produced by Sterling Bank in partnership with Stears, a digital information company.

Dele Faseemo, Group Head, Renewable Energy at Sterling Bank, said in a statement issued by the bank that the Imperium Platform seeks to provide clean and affordable energy solutions to interested customers while providing different financing options to customers purchasing the solution outright or paying for the installation and operation of the solution.

Faseemo explained that Sterling Bank, in partnership with Stears Data, the data collection, analytics, and data access division of Stears, embarked on the study to tackle the problem of providing solar energy in the country.

The report showed that despite the privatization of Nigeria’s electricity industry, the country still has one of the lowest electrification rates in the world, as 43 percent of its population has no access to grid electricity, an indication that 85 million Nigerians are not connected to – and cannot receive electricity from – the Nigerian transmission grid.

He said the Imperium would provide a range of purchase options to consumers because solar energy solutions are not one-size-fits-all, so purchasing options should not be either.

According to him, Sterling Bank employs several purchase models to provide renewable energy solutions for its customers. This ensures that customers with different needs and purchase abilities can access solar energy solutions.

He listed the options to include outright purchase, lease to own, and power as a service. Using outright purchase as an example, he said that energy consumers could purchase products directly from vendors via the Imperium Platform, a dedicated e-commerce platform hosted by Sterling Bank.

In lease to own, Imperium provides financing at competitive interest rates for consumers with good credit scores or clean credit checks who are keen to own the assets. Under power as a service, Imperium offers fixed monthly energy-charge options to consumers, but the underlying assets are owned by Imperium as it (Imperium) purchases and owns the assets.

This saves clients huge capital outlay and maintenance worries, while the monthly energy charge is based on the capacity deployed.

In this regard, the bank has recently partnered with the Nike Art Gallery to install solar panels at the gallery via the bank’s Imperium outlet as part of its commitment to a renewable energy-powered Nigeria and the development of the nation’s tourism sector.

The development is a sequel to recent partnerships with the gallery to drive an appreciation and spotlight the investment opportunities available in Nigeria’s arts and tourism sectors.

The Nike Art Gallery, owned by Chief Nike Okundaye, is one of the largest of its kind in the West African sub-region, with a collection of about 8,000 diverse artworks from various Nigerian artists.

FBN Holdings Plc recently announced its audited results for the financial year ended 31 December 2021.

Highlighting revenue and profitability, the Group delivered a stellar performance growing gross revenue by 28.2% to ₦757.3 billion and profit before tax by 99.1% to ₦166.7 billion.

The 30.0% growth in loans and advances to ₦2.9 trillion and 16.2% growth in total asset to ₦8.9 trillion reaffirms our commitment to drive revenue and profitability as we complete the balance sheet clean-up.

Commenting on the results, Dr. Adesola Adeduntan, Chief Executive Officer of FirstBank Group said:

“Following years of strategic restructuring of the Bank’s balance sheet and operations, the Commercial Banking business is beginning to transition into a sustained growth phase delivering performance commensurate to the size of our business and capabilities of our people. Profit before tax is up 77.9%, gross earnings 30.3%, total assets 15.9% and customer deposits up 19.5%.

Gross earnings grew by 28.2% to ₦757.3 billion (Dec 2020: ₦590.7 billion). Interest income remained challenged given the moderated interest rate environment negatively impacting yields; as a result, interest income declined 4.1% to ₦369.0 billion (Dec 2020: ₦384.8 billion).

In 2021, FBNH operated in a challenging operating environment that was pressured by high inflation and currency devaluation, the effect of which increased operating expenses by 14.2% to ₦334.2 billion (Dec 2020: ₦292.5 billion). However, this 14.2% is below the inflation level (Dec 2020: 15.6%) whilst regulatory cost also rose during the period, up 23.2% y-o-y.

Despite the inflationary push factors, operating income grew 35.5% to ₦592.8 billion (Dec 2020: ₦437.6 billion), resulting in an improvement in cost to income ratio to 56.4% (Dec 2020: 66.8%).

Going forward, we will sustain our focus towards further improving efficiency by containing cost and increasing revenue.

Stanbic IBTC continued to champion the job creation drive in Nigeria through initiatives such as its graduate trainee programme and various entrepreneurial programmes, which had created job opportunities for Nigerians.

Dr. Demola Sogunle, Chief Executive, Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC commented on the financial institutions’ role as a job provider in Nigeria. He said the financial services provider was always at the forefront in bridging Nigeria’s unemployment deficit through its various programmes and provided necessary tools for its graduands to navigate through the 21st century job environment.

“As a financial institution that placed much value on job creation, Stanbic IBTC continued to provide various employment opportunities geared at bridging the nation’s unemployment gap. Through our various graduate trainee programmes, we had ushered successful candidates out of the despair of unemployment and economic instability. Unemployment figure released by the National Bureau of Statistics was quite high, at 33.3 per cent.” Demola said.

“Graduates under our trainee programmes were exposed to seasoned subject experts in artificial intelligence and machine learning, financial management, data, cloud and blockchain technology. Stanbic IBTC has enabled numerous graduates to be prepared for the future,” he added.

The Chief Executive noted that Stanbic IBTC would continue to provide opportunities for Nigerians to achieve their dreams and contribute to bridging the nation’s unemployment deficit.

“At Stanbic IBTC, we strongly believe in the dreams and aspirations of every Nigerian and we remain committed to providing avenues for fulfilling these aspirations,” Demola said.

Funke Amobi, Country Head, People and Culture, Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC commented on the role Stanbic IBTC played in bridging Nigeria’s unemployment deficit. She said the financial services provider had taken the lead to provide job opportunities for Nigerian youths despite the economic challenges that plagued business organisations.

“The importance of job opportunities cannot be overemphasised in Nigeria. As a corporate entity, we have lived up to these responsibilities, and have provided opportunities to Nigerians through our trainee programmes. Also, our entrepreneurial programmes are geared at equipping beneficiaries with the required skills to run successful businesses, and thus enhancing employment generation.,” Funke said.

She further assured Nigerians that the organisation would continue to provide opportunities for citizens to achieve their aspirations.