Mr. Bello Hassan

Managing Director/Chief Executive

Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC)

The Managing Director/Chief Executive of the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Mr. Bello Hassan has called on the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) to include courses on the deposit insurance system (DIS) into the Institute’s programs and modules to deepen the understanding of the scheme within the banking public.

The NDIC Boss made the call during a courtesy call on the Corporation’s Management in Abuja by the Council Members of ICAN, led by the President of the Institute, Mrs. Comfort Eyitayo.

According to Hassan, this would help to bridge the knowledge gap and address misconceptions on the benefits and limitations of the DIS, particularly its contributions to financial system stability.

Hassan noted that public awareness was a critical factor towards ensuring the maximum impact and penetration of the benefits of the deposit insurance system on the general public and the financial system as a whole. He said that partnership with ICAN and other stakeholders to promote public awareness of the DIS had become necessary in view of the novel nature of the scheme in Nigeria and world at large, adding that the Corporation would continue to place premium on collaboration with its strategic stakeholders in the overall discharge of its mandate.

The NDIC Boss thereafter, congratulated Mrs. Eyitayo on her assumption of office as the 57^th ICAN President. He urged her to ensure chartered accountants continue to uphold the ideals of accuracy and integrity as enshrined in the Institute’s motto. He assured the Institute of the Corporation’s continued support and collaboration.

In her remarks, Mrs. Eyitayo acknowledged the invaluable contributions of the NDIC in stabilizing the financial system in Nigeria. For an efficient financial services industry, the ICAN President stressed the need to sustain depositors’ trust and confidence by continuous reassurance of the safety of their deposits at any given time.

She expressed the commitment of the Institute towards the continued partnership with the Corporation to achieve greater awareness of the deposit insurance system amongst members of the Institute.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Mr. Bello Hassan has expressed the readiness of the Corporation to partner with the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) towards enhancing innovation in the delivery of services to depositors and its other stakeholders.

Hassan made the disclosure while receiving the Director-General of the bureau, Mr. Dasuki Ibrahim Arabi and his management team on courtesy visit to the Corporation.

The NDIC boss said the commitment of the Corporation to effective service delivery informed the Board’s swift approval for the establishment of an Efficiency and Innovation Unit in the Strategy Development Department in compliance with the directive of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation.

While stating the Corporation’s support for external assessment of its performance, Hassan expressed the belief that the Self- Assessment Tool (SAT) developed by the bureau would complement the Corporation’s existing mechanism for assessing the effective discharge of its mandate as well as assist it in achieving the Federal Government’s objectives of significantly strengthening governance and accountability in service delivery to the citizenry.

Earlier in his presentation, Dasuki Arabi explained that the IT-based self-assessment tool of the bureau is designed to coordinate, monitor and evaluate the implementation of reforms as well as disseminate information on all aspects of public service, amongst other objectives.

He expressed optimism in the Corporation’s implementing the bureau’s self-assessment processes and its commitment towards putting innovation as a top priority to promote excellence in service delivery. He said the BPSR would continue to collaborate with the NDIC as well as other government agencies in assessing their performance to ensure optimal discharge of their mandate to the populace.

The Pan-African banking group, the Ecobank Group, is the African Banker’s 2021 African SME Bank of the Year.

Ecobank beat a host of other banks in the African Banker Awards 2021 to take home the SME Award in a 2020 tumultuous year characterised by the Covid-19 pandemic which continues to ravage many African economies, with Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) taking the greatest hit.

Among other criteria, the African SME Bank of the Year award 2021 recognises the bank which has significantly contributed to the development of the SME sector, thus helping them to build the economic backbone of the continent.

Part of the entry criteria required that the winning bank has significantly catalysed funding into the private sector in Africa and promoted enterprise development by facilitating credit and access to finance for SMEs.

Since the onset of Covid-19, the Ecobank Group has considerably ramped up investments in programmes targeting SMEs by expanding SME-focused lines of credit, providing technical assistance to SME development institutions and building SMEs’ capacity via linkage programmes in partnership with its strategic partners.

The Group has been at the forefront of promoting gender inclusion and closing the gender finance gap through innovative initiatives such as ‘Ellevate by Ecobank’ that targets women-led and women-focused businesses across the continent.

Ecobank Group Executive, Commercial Banking, Josephine Ankomah, said “2020 was a year of unprecedented challenges on account of the Covid-19 pandemic. It required resilience and innovation. We needed to rethink our business and provide innovative ways to assist our SME customers to help them to survive the difficulties brought about by the pandemic. We are truly honoured to receive this recognition. Our immense gratitude goes to our staff, customers and partners who have made this possible.”

Some of the measures taken by the Bank to support SMEs in 2020 include:

• Proactively instituting mitigating actions, including tenor extensions and moratoriums on interest, to assist SMEs to manage their loan repayments;
• Increasing the utilisation of digital channels, such as Ecobank Omni Lite, to provide customers with capabilities to make payments remotely and conveniently;
• Upskilling staff to ensure their capacity to help develop the SME sector;
• Collaborating with existing risk sharing partners, particularly Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), to share a portion of the risk associated with our lending to the SME sector;
• Partnering with tech giant Google to provide SME customers with the means to develop free online presence through the Google My Business platform;
• Collaborating with the African Union’s Development Agency – AUDA-NEPAD – to focus on strengthening Africa’s support for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and assist their recovery from the impact of the pandemic by empowering MSMEs with access to capabilities, markets and finance, so that they can play a pivotal role in restarting Africa’s economies;
• Launch of ‘Ellevate by Ecobank’ which is a women-owned and women-focused product offering women an end-to-end partnership, through which they gain access to both financial and non-financial services such as financial education, product information, networking and recognition; and
• Growing the number of merchants using Ecobank’s point-of-sale (POS) terminals from 5,571 to 15,878, in addition to attracting significant onboards onto EcobankPay, our flagship QR collections platform, from 180,060 to 248,664.

To unify customer experience while using its Mobile App, Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, is set to introduce the Single Sign-on authentication feature that will allow customers access all their active profiles across the Group.

The Single Sign-on is an innovative capability from the end-to-end financial services institution. It was birthed to simplify customers’ access to the Stanbic IBTC Mobile App, also known as the Super App. It enables customers to use single login credentials to access multiple services operated across the Group on its Super App.

In an announcement, Demola Sogunle, Chief Executive, Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, stated that the Single Sign-on enabled capability would no longer isolate customers’ access to financial services as was the case in times past on its Mobile App.

He said, “the Single Sign-on capability enabled on the Stanbic IBTC Holdings Super App will not only remove difficulties associated with using different passwords while operating more than one subsidiary, but it will also efficiently deliver on our vision to operate as a Universal Financial Services Organisation (UFSO) in the digital era.”

The benefit of this new initiative is the customer’s option to enable the Single Sign-on on one or all the Stanbic IBTC subsidiaries they operate via the Super App and reduce the inconvenience of retrieving lost passwords for different subsidiaries.

This capability permits a user to use one set of login credentials – for example, a username and password – to access multiple profiles with the group. It enables users to remember and manage just a single username and password on the Mobile App, thereby streamlining the process of signing on with different passwords.

Demola reiterated Stanbic IBTC’s readiness to continue to seek, proffer innovative solutions to customers’ challenges and meet them at the point of their financial needs.

“The birth of the Single Sign-on can be described as meeting a pressing need at the right time, and we are very positive that this will bring smiles to the faces of our customers,” Demola concluded.