Access Bank Plc on Monday while on a visit to the Nigeria Stock Exchange unveiled its new five-year ambitious plan to become Africa’s gateway to the world.
The bank’s CEO/Group Managing Director, Herbert Wigwe, while presenting the strategy, said, “Five years ago we set the ambitious goal to attain top three positions in our chosen markets. Today, we are a strong, diversified institution with a consolidated top-tier position in our sector”.
According to the bank, the move was the latest in a series of transformative strategies that have resulted in sustained growth over the years.
“We are setting out a new and ambitious five-year strategy which will put Access Bank at the forefront of Africa’s changing financial landscape by creating a universal payments gateway to dominate international trade and inter-African payments,” Wigwe continued.
The new five-year strategy, the bank said, will accelerate the growth story to position Access Bank as the number one Nigerian bank by 2022 and create a universal payments gateway to dominate international trade and inter-African payments.
The new strategy has six strategic levers, Which are “digitally led; retail banking growth and consolidation in wholesale markets; customer-focused; analytics-driven, with robust risk management; strong global collaboration in key gateway markets; and the creation of a universal payments gateway.”
To deliver the transformation, Access Bank said it would adopt a new organisational structure with the retail bank having a customer segment focus, driven by digital and payments.
It said the corporate bank would build deep sector expertise and deploy global relationship managers, of which the bank’s subsidiaries would be organised around strategic clusters, with strong collaboration between them to secure trade finance and correspondent banking.
From 2013 to November 2017, Access Bank said it had increased its total assets at a compound annual growth rate of 18 per cent and delivered shareholder returns of 90 per cent, adding that it had also grown its customer base from 90,000 in 2002 to over eight million in 2017 and opened 351 new branches within the same period.