Patrick Akinwuntan

Managing Director

Ecobank Nigeria

The Managing Director, Ecobank Nigeria, Patrick Akinwuntan called on parents to ensure their children study online and stay on top of their education despite the current closure of schools occasioned by the Covid -19 pandemic.

Akinwuntan, in a message to mark this year’s Children’s Day, observed that the coronavirus pandemic may have disrupted the usual academic activities globally, children should however keep up with learning  supported with e-learning materials pending when schools re-open.

“We recently entered a social impact literacy campaign with Google to support the education of children at home across Africa due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are leveraging our distribution and partners networks to raise awareness of literacy apps in the Google Play Store to support the education of children. It is more important than ever that parents’ guide their children in using technology to continue to learn and improve their knowledge. With physical distancing being enforced and schools closed, we must help children keep up with their learning and homework. We decided to close that gap.” He stated.

Further, Mr. Akinwuntan said in recognition of the fact that children remain the future of tomorrow, the bank parades suitable bouquet of products and services that would enhance their financial education and saving habits.

As businesses across the globe continue to adapt to the new normal as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19), Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC, a member of Standard Bank Group, has identified strategic decisions that companies need to make in order to keep their businesses afloat.

The leading full-service financial services organisation advised companies and business owners to take advantage of opportunities such as the Central Bank of Nigeria’s COVID-19 Intervention Fund while also exploring digital transformation options.

Other solutions proferred include engagement of legal counsels to review key issues as well as the development of customer-focused strategies to ensure the preservation of customer loyalty and brand value, amongst others.

Folake Ademiluyi, Head, Power and Infrastructure, Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC made this known during the Stanbic IBTC Blue Talks Webinar. She stated that the companies can ensure the sustainability of their business processes by taking proactive measures needed to thrive in these uncertain times.

Ademiluyi further stated that companies to go back to the drawing board and come up with fresh ideas to sustain their businesses to avoid being adversely affected by the pandemic. “Business owners must tap into the various stimulus packages that the CBN has provided to resuscitate their businesses” she said.

Similarly, Nnenna Okoro, Head, Consumer Sector, Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC, implored companies to leverage on digitalisation to serve customers better. She noted that despite the impact of coronavirus on the nation, Stanbic IBTC has been using digital channels to serve its customers better.

She said: “Stanbic IBTC has been engaging clients constantly using digital channels. We understand the benefits of leveraging Information Technology to engage and serve customers, especially in a time such as this. Therefore, we implore companies to take advantage of digitalisation to reach their customers.”

The United States of America (USA) through its Department of the Treasury has written to the Board of Governors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) seeking an independent probe into allegations of ethics abuses by its president, Akinwumi Adesina.

According to the AFP, US Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin expressed “deep reservations” about the outcome of an internal inquiry which recently cleared Adesina.

In the letter dated May 22, 2020 and addressed to the chair of the AfDB’s board, Ivorian Planning and Development Minister Niale Kaba, Mnuchin said:

“We urge you to initiate an in-depth investigation of the allegations using the services of an independent outside investigator of high professional standing. We fear that wholesale dismissal of all allegations without appropriate investigation will tarnish the reputation of this institution as one that does not uphold high standards of ethics and governance. This is a serious risk when we need strong confidence in the AfDB to play an influential role in the current global economic and health crisis, and when many shareholders are seeking legislative support for payments under the recently-concluded General Capital Increase.”

The allegations against Adesina emanated from whistleblowers’ 15-page report accusing Adesina of embezzlement, preferential treatment for Nigerians in senior appointments and the promotion of people suspected or convicted of fraud and corruption.

However, the bank’s ethics committee conducted an internal inquiry and dismissed the allegations against Adesina on the ground that the complaint “rested on no objective, solid facts.”

In his own reaction, Adesina described the allegations as “spurious and unfounded” and “blatantly false.”

However, in a new letter to Bank Governors, a group of anonymous “concerned staff members of the AfDB” denounced the internal probe that cleared Adesina, saying it was tainted by “irregularities and manipulations.”

Global Finance has named Ecobank as the most innovative bank in Africa.

The announcement was made at the eighth Global Finance annual awards, the Innovators 2020, honoring entities that regularly identify new paths and design new tools in finance.

Categories in the award include Top Innovations in Corporate Finance, Payments, Trade Finance, Cash Management, Islamic Finance, with Winners selected from different regions of the world.

The classes of award comprised Most Innovative Banks in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Central & Eastern Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America and Western Europe; The Most Innovative Fintech Companies in Asia-Pacific, Central & Eastern Europe, North America and Western Europe; and The Best Financial Innovation Labs

At the virtual awards announcement, Anita Hawser, European Editor at Global Finance and Lead, Global Finance Awards evaluation team, noted that companies recognized at the Innovators 2020 significantly stood apart.

She said the review panel looked at innovation in the context of product or process innovation, as they were ultimately more concerned with the impact of innovation in terms of creating value for customers or addressing a specific need, like speeding up lending or credit review process  for small businesses; enabling companies to deposit cheques remotely and not having to visit the branches.

According to her, these are innovations that significantly reduce the time or cost of companies to perform financial tasks and really transform customers’ business lives helping them operate more effectively in a significantly challenging business and economic environment.

In his remark, Ade Ayeyemi, Ecobank Group CEO said: “We are pleased to be recognised as the “Most Innovative Bank in Africa” by Global Finance. This attests to the strength of our brand in multiple countries across Africa, our unique pan-African platform, and our innovative banking products and solutions made possible by the success of our digital transformation journey.”

With a larger African footprint than any other bank operating in West, Central, East and Southern Africa, Ecobank is the only bank that has banking operations that spans 33  African countries, operating a truly integrated African network. That is One unified integrated Ecobank Mobile Banking App, that works seamlessly across all 33 operating countries in Africa; One Ecobank Omni and Omni Lite serving multinationals and SMEs in Africa; One Rapid transfer app that breaks down country borders and allows the diaspora community send money directly to their loved ones, instantly and affordably across Africa; One Ecobank Online Banking platform that can be easily accessed across 33 African countries.

The Ecobank Group’s unique and largest pan-African platform is designed to help unlock the opportunities of the continent, for the benefit of the continent, through standardization, thereby enabling regional integration, and trade and investment across borders.

With the Group’s sterling performance, it has been severally recognised as ‘Best Retail Bank in Africa 2019’ at African Banker Awards; Most Admired Financial Services Brand in Africa 2019 by Brand Africa 100; Best Digital Bank in Africa – 2017 by Euromoney Awards; Best Retail Bank and Innovation in Banking both in 2018 by the African Banker Awards amongst others.

As the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to ravage various economies across the globe, Stanbic IBTC Holdings PLC, a member of Standard Bank Group, has advised that Nigeria and her citizens must take proactive measures needed to avoid the looming recession that is expected to follow the pandemic.

Speaking during the Stanbic IBTC ‘Blue Talk’ Webinar on YouTube, Akinbamidele Akintola, Head, Sub Saharan Africa Equity Sales, Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers Limited, said that this year has been challenging for businesses globally, because of the impact of coronavirus, and if appropriate measures are not taken, the world may go into a global recession.

He advised the government to provide measures to stabilise the Nigerian economy, measures such as removal of fuel subsidy, curtailing recurrent expenditure, pursuing the privatisation programme, avoiding the raising of Euro Bonds and efficient port services. These are in addition to other interventions necessary  in order to avoid a recession in the country.

He said:  “Nigeria’s revenue was about N4 trillion last year and we spent N1.9 trillion on fuel subsidy, which was almost 50%. We can generate more revenue from taxation by widening the tax base to capture more people, as well as exploiting the privatisation programme to raise revenue. We also need an efficient port to move goods in and out quickly. This will help the economy grow faster.”

Akintola also recommended that the government should strategically cut down cost on recurrent expenditure, which currently stands at about 80% of the country’s income. Similarly, he encouraged Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to source their materials locally in order to boost the economy.

He further advised the government against borrowing, “This is not the time to raise euro bonds, we need to focus on concessionary money, that we can earn at two to three per cent,” he said.

Vinod Madhavan

Head of Trade

Standard Bank

The Covid-19 outbreak is set to significantly impact trade growth for the year as countries limit physical movement to curb the virus spread. While the health crisis undoubtedly has vast negative implications for global trade processes, it is one that could be turned into an opportunity as it provides the political and social impetus to accelerate trade digitization on a larger scale.

Trade services have traditionally centred around physically intensive processes involving the likes of paperwork, signatures and frequent manual data entries. Infact, it has been estimated that up to 15 per cent of the cost of shipment is paperwork in global trade. In the current environment of Covid-19 related lockdowns, many of these processes that work to facilitate cross-border and international trade have been impacted and may temporarily have been rendered obsolete to a certain degree.

Existing technological solutions are available for logistics and trade.

Rapidly implementing them out of necessity from the current environment will be an excellent step in the right direction for trade digitization. This however requires collaborative approach between governments and industries to remove barriers by amending and aligning regulatory frameworks.

In many of the 20 countries in which Standard Bank operates, there are stringent and specific requirements around the roll-out of digital solutions.

Some of the countries have taken market-appropriate approaches towards moving to digitizing trade. In certain places on the continent, if one wants to issue a guarantee, for example, the standard is to issue on a physical piece of paper.

While the core nature of trade is unlikely to fundamentally change in the near to medium term, future-financial institutions are on a journey to streamline these processes, very often through leveraging the ABCD (artificial intelligence, block-chain, cloud computing and data analytics) of disruptive technologies.

From the point of view of adoption of robotics/intelligent automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in trade business processing, Standard Bank has had good success in South Africa and Uganda. Ghana is not far behind in adoption. Purely by leveraging this technology, one could materially quicken up the issuance of a local guarantee, reducing the time taken to issue a guarantee, for example, by 80 per cent.

If we take it a step further and combine AI with Optical Character Recognition (OCR),we can bring increased operational efficiencies to the areas of manual document sorting and data entry, starting the journey of reducing the manual nature of trade processes.

Such technologies allow for banks to take documentation needed to validate a transaction (sometimes 50-100 pieces of paper) and evaluate or validate that documentation against the letter of credit instrument in a much shorter time period.

Standard Bank partnered with Traydstream – a fintech that leverages OCR and machine learning – in 2019 to digitize the current manual process of checking the document against the Letters of Credit for Discrepancies.

The OCR tech allows for us to get a response to a document within less than an hour in some of Standard Bank’s markets. The typical validation process could take anywhere between three to five days, in fact the international banking norms, allows for five working days for this activity to take place.

Importantly, the machine learning system will continue to learn and evolve over time improving on its benefits. It also offers value-added services such as shipping vessels tracking, which is particularly useful for our clients who are importing from around the world.

A theme that is evident currently is a desire for quantum change. Trade has traditionally been paper based; with the document of title, such as Bill of Lading (BL) being the cornerstone of trade. Even there, those who were previously hesitant to accept an electronic bill of lading, for example, are now ready to embrace and adopt the technology for its benefits. The impetus that the virus has brought to trade digitization should therefore not be underestimated.

While initiatives focusing on adoption of electronic bill of lading (or e-bills) have been around for about 10 years and adopted reasonably successfully in some developed markets, the adoption of the same in markets in Africa has been intermittent. Without the legal and regulatory framework required to support the technology, the adoption cannot be on a mass scale.  The impact of courier company’s inability to deliver trade documents to banks timeously -would have been mitigated, if e-bills had been adopted in our markets.

Another area that requires focus from regulators in our markets, is to create an atmosphere allowing industry to embrace cloud computing.

Standard Bank is currently in conversations with multiple regulators, exploring how we could go about amending regulations, even though it may be a temporary dispensation for the duration of Covid-19, to facilitate digital trade. These engagements are happening in multiple markets across our network. With the challenges brought about by the virus outbreak, there is now an exciting dialogue in markets that will help to influence some of the necessary changes.

It is hoped that by leveraging basics such as digitized signatures and documents and technological innovations such as data analytics, AI and automation to change and improve the way local and international trade is done today, we can reduce friction in the trade process, boost activity and through doing so, help to reduce the impact from reduced global trade, brought about by the global health pandemic.

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Debtors Africa – an independent searchable database of recalcitrant and delinquent debtors in Africa was launched into the market today, in addition a Debtors Report – a comprehensive analysis of the Debt/Non-Performing Loans Situation in the Nigerian Banking Industry was also presented for information.

The report which was done in partnership with Proshare represents a culmination of a detailed review of the credit experiences of local Nigerian banks in the last two decades and reveals the challenges of a local lending cycle that has seen lenders become victims of the tyranny of bad and delinquent debtors.

The report makes a case for a new approach to the lending cycle to ensure that integrity, professionalism and evidence-based best lending practices are strictly followed to guarantee the sustainability of the financial system and the prosperity of the larger economy.

Key highlights of the report include:

• The Industry & its Debt Position
• Definition of a delinquent debtor and how this has changed over the years including how banks end up with bad debtors
• The Sectors & Regions affected & Impact on GDP
• Provisions of the law as regards credit collection and recovery in Nigeria
• The AMCON approach, lessons learnt, and the way for banks to adopt a revised credit recovery framework
• Case Study of approaches adopted in recovering debt; and
• Fresh methods a New Approach offers to banks troubled by delinquent debts

Ecobank Nigeria has reiterated that its agency banking scheme, also known as Xpress Points, is building entrepreneurs and pushing financial inclusion to the large unbanked and under-banked population in Nigeria.

The Ecobank Xpress Point enables eligible Agents to carry out financial transactions on behalf of Ecobank and earn commission on every transaction  processed. The consumer experience is very good as customers can do simple deposit, payment and transfers in their own neighbourhood rather than travel for hours to a bank branch. Ecobank Xpress Points is also a channel that can be used for the deployment of national social intervention programmes of the Government.

The aim of the Xpress Point is to let every Nigerian and household have access to Ecobank services within their neighbourhood to provide easy banking services.

Speaking in Lagos, Nike Kolawole, Head, Agency Banking, Ecobank Nigeria, said unemployed and retired persons should avail themselves the opportunity to earn extra income by keying into services offered by the bank as Xpress point agents. According to her, the Ecobank Xpress point which are in various neighbourhoods across the country, are well positioned to facilitate basic financial transactions, with the process and services simplified to attend to a broad spectrum of the society.

She further disclosed that agency banking in general, brings about economic and youth empowerment by way of job creation and earning extra income, adding that small savers can easily do their savings at home or near their home. This leads to financial inclusion of the under-banked in the country.

For now, Ecobank has over 43,000 agents across Africa. The agents carry out financial transactions on behalf of Ecobank and earn commission per transaction processed. Xpress Points can also be used as a channel for the deployment of national social intervention programmes, especially at this time that we are fighting the impact of lockdowns due to the COVID-19.”

Kolawole listed the services offered by the Xpress point agents as; cash in, cash out, fund transfer, bills payment, airtime recharge, remittance and account opening, among others. She added that the services are available for “sole proprietors, partnerships, co-operative societies, microfinance banks, companies with large distribution network – like petrol stations, FMCGs, telecommunication companies, super agents, aggregators and unregistered businesses such as petty traders, hair salon and others.”

Ecobank boasts of a bouquet of digital channels comprising solutions aimed at delivering convenient, accessible and reliable financial services. For instance, users of the bank’s USSD code, *326# carry out transactions without paying session charges.

The USSD platform, *326#, makes it possible to open an Xpress account and Xpress Save account instantly. The bank’s mobile banking app, Ecobank Mobile offers the option of generating a virtual card; this comes in handy as customers are continually turning to web payments for their shopping and payments.

The Ecobank virtual card offers the flexibility and convenience of creating a shopping card that is not linked to a customer’s account but is fully capable of carrying out online payments. The virtual card can also be shared with loved ones as a gift card for their own shopping.