Access Bank Plc’s drive for effective banking and promotion of financial inclusion, has in the past years yielded positive results.
Over the years, the bank has rewarded customers with cash prizes and foreign trips in its AccessMore mega reward scheme.
Truly, Financial services is a tricky, competitive business in Africa. And even more so in Nigeria, where over 100 banks operate and are all vying for the top spot.
Listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Access Bank PLC. is a leading full-service commercial bank operating a network of more than 600 branches and service outlets. It has 3,000 ATMs, over 28,000 employees and services 45 million customers.
Rewarding customers is part of the bank’s strategy to drive easy, effective and rewarding banking, using our AccessMore mobile app.
Access Bank Plc, has grown into Nigeria’s biggest lender by assets, setting its sights even higher and is changing its corporate structure to fuel an expansion.
The lender transitioned to a financial holding company in Nigeria this month as it plans to offer more services beyond traditional banking, including payments, insurance and asset management, under Chief Executive Officer Herbert Wigwe.
The bank, which has operations in 16 countries, aims to become one of the continent’s biggest banks over the next five years.
The Access Bank’s AccessMore app is a unique payment application built on cutting-edge technology, offering tailored and personalized services and excellent customer experience. The app is easy to use and is available for download on Android PlayStore and iOS Store.
Access Bank is a technology driven bank, where every transaction a customer transacts on the app, he earns a point and the point is equivalent to naira and beyond that the bank picks its top earners with the biggest transaction.
Its scalability and innovation are the real prizes – for example; its online loan product disposes a loan to a qualifying customer in less than 10 seconds. Brilliant!
Access Bank’s commitment to sustain its cross-border banking presence in Africa following the bank’s discontinuation of Sidian Bank of Kenya’s acquisition.
The bank said in a statement signed by the Company Secretary of Access Holdings Plc, Sunday Ekwochi, that the failed acquisition’s entire 83.4 per cent shareholding held by the investment company in Sidian Bank Ltd stemmed from its failure to meet some requisite conditions.
The completion of the proposed transaction was subject to fulfilment or waiver of certain conditions before the long stop date as defined in the transaction agreement.
Although regulators have all been supportive in engagements around the transaction, certain conditions precedent including those required of Sidian Bank which was needed to prudently complete the transaction have not been met and the parties were unable to reach an agreement on the variation of these conditions in a manner to deliver the desired outcome for the parties.Over $300 million has been invested in Access Bank by its parent company, Access Holdings, to further strengthen the lender amid a series of acquisitions by the Nigerian bank.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Access Holdings said part of the $300 million was to boost Access Bank’s total capital ratios, which is a measure of how much capital a bank has available to withstand a certain amount of capital losses before being at risk of bankruptcy or becoming insolvent.
Access Holdings handed fresh capital to increase Access Bank’s liquidity to shelter the commercial bank against any untoward wind.
Access Holdings said the investment was expected to improve Access Bank’s “total capital ratios.”
Access Bank has been splashing capital on a series of acquisitions, which is expected to burden the lender’s capital base.
It acquired African Banking Corporation in Mozambique, Grobank Limited in South Africa, as well as Cavmont Bank Limited in Zambia.
The lender is also in talks to acquire Finibanco Angola S.A. and the African Banking Corporation subsidiary in Botswana and will use part of the $300 million to finance its African expansion strategy.
“Access Holdings Plc (“Access Holdings”) is pleased to announce its completion of a US$300 million (Three Hundred Million United States Dollars) capital investment into its flagship subsidiary, Access Bank Plc (“Access Bank” or “the Bank”) (‘the Investment’), the proceeds of which will supplement the capital needs of its African expansion strategy” a statement by the bank reads.
“Over the years, the Bank has made significant strides towards attaining strong market presence in the key trade and payments corridors across the African continent.
Access Bank in its growth trajectory has created a critical link between the bank, its branches, ATMs, and its people, with its central banking systems all running on the VMware private cloud environment.
Other positive factors experienced by the bank include stability and security, and the Access Bank card information system hosted on its private cloud seamlessly complies with local and global Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DDS). As for security – the team says it can safeguard critical personal information and is happy to report it has not suffered a breach.
As for its engineers, resources are now able to provide real business value and are no longer changing parts or checking drives. And rolling out innovative banking applications and services is done from an agile environment that has, according to the team, changed how it can react to and deliver on demands driven by different divisions for new technologies.
Olamide Adeniji is a member of the editorial team of TheScript Newspaper
