Access Bank Eyes 30m Customers, Chunk Of $160bn Intra-African Trade In Five-Year Plan

Having attained significant milestones over the past 10 years in line with its strategic growth plan, including a net revenue of N273bn, Profit before tax of N90bn; N2.089tr deposit base and N3.484tr asset base, while significantly reducing non-performing loans ratio from 12.9% in 2005 to 2.1% in the 2016 full year, among others, the management of Access Bank Plc, on Monday, in Lagos, unveiled its strategic growth plan for the 2018- 2022 financial years.
At the heart of the plan are a set of ambitious targets, including 30 million retail customers over 300% above the present seven million in the next five-years, much of it could come from plans to go after the unbanked in urban areas of Nigeria and selected African countries.
In the process, Herbert Wigwe, the group’s chief executive said the bank also plans to become “Africa’s gateway to the world” by pitching for a juicy chunk of the $160bn a year intra-African payments as part of becoming Nigeria’s number one bank.
To achieve this in specific terms, Access Bank plans to “create a universal payments gateway powered by technology and a strong network of relationships across operating countries.”
This is addition to enhancing “retail offering across key market segments and increase focus on digital to support our retail and payment business; (ensure) effective use of big data and analytics to drive customer insights and support customer acquisition and retention; (and) achieve dominance with Nigeria’s corporates.”
Among 13 strategic levers expected to enable Access Bank become Nigeria’s premier retail bank as part of achieving its five-year plan include dominance of the rising middle income segment; being the leading brand in the youth segment by focusing on local and international students to be offered unique propositions as they transit from students to professionals.
Also on the card is a plan to service the urban unbanked population through a network of agents; selectively lending to value-chain companies and increasing penetration in intervention funds; introduction of revised SME coverage model focused on high-value customers; in addition to adopting performance management and mind-set change, among others.
Also on the card, is the plan to “focus on global collaboration with respect to correspondent banking and intra-Africa payments.”
The group, he stressed, seeks to become an integrated global franchise, while pursuing opportunities to achieve dominance in trade payments and correspondent banking as big foreign banks like Barclays exit the African nations such as Gambia to focus on the U.S. and Britain.
Access Bank’s correspondent banking business, he said, will be driven from its London hub to service African players, while embarking on global customer acquisition and servicing and in the process “become more effective and deliberate about jointly pursuing and serving large multinational companies operating across our footprint.”
To achieve its five-year target, Wigwe said the ecosystem has been segmented into identified global financial gateways such as the UK, US, Hong Kong; trade hubs like: Dubai, China, Lebanon, Mumbai; while key African markets are: Ghana, Rwanda, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Angola and South Africa; Gambia, Sierra Leone and Democratic Republic of Congo are listed as “rest of Africa.
Specifically, he continued, the bank’s subsidiaries will be organised around strategic clusters, with strong collaboration between them to secure trade finance and correspondent banking. He revealed that the bank’s transformation programme will be underpinned by robust risk management together with high levels of automation to enhance the compliance and risk functions and drive customer insights.
Also on the road to 2022, Wigwe said Access Bank will remain a customer-focused organization in structure, with the retail banking business group adopting “a customer-segment focused structure and evolve branches towards a greater mix of customer service personnel.”
In focusing on customers, the bank hopes to shift from the geographic driven branch structure, even as branches are remodeled to become more customer friendly with increased self-service options, introducing highly trained lobby service officers that will help migrate customers to self-service channels.
To help achieve the strategic plans, the GMD said Access Bank has identified nine levers that would help the transformation into a digital-led bank, such as simplicity, connectivity, automation, ‘decisioning,’ IT, organization, as well as capabilities,
The bank expects lending to retail customers to account for around 10% by 2022, up from less than 7 percent now.
Wigwe said Access would tap debt markets if necessary, but it will fund growth from cashflow and says there may be no need to raise equity capital in view of the strategic plan.
Already, he said, Access Bank has achieved the top three positions in its chosen market, a target it set for between 2013 and 2017 to become “a strong, diversified institution with a consolidated top tier position in our sector.”

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