• Laments Efficiencies, High Cost Of Fund Transfers
Patrick Akinwuntan, Managing Director/Chief Executive and Regional Executive of Ecobank Nigeria Limited, a member of the Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (Ecobank Group), at the weekend, unveiled his ambitious vision making the brand the financial service provider of choice for customers.
Speaking at a dinner to officially welcome him into the new role and onto the Ecobank Nigeria Board, he noted his ambition to grow customer base by over to 40m customers by two and half years, which he agreed was “audacious… (but) achievable.”
According to him, “Ecobank Nigeria must be the jewel in the Ecobank crown and the affiliate that sets the roadmap for others to follow.”
This, he believes, is possible by ensuring “customer service excellence and a suite of innovative and convenient banking services that makes banking easy for retail and corporate customers alike.
“Nigeria has a vibrant population of 180 million and I want a large share of these to be served by Ecobank. Therefore, I am setting an audacious customer growth target against the group goal to serve 100 million customers by 2020.
“We currently have 9 million customers in Nigeria and I want to grow this to 40m customers within two and a half years. This may be a huge challenge but I resolutely believe that it is one that can be achieved.”
The bank also used the commemorative dinner to introduce a dedicated mobile remittance app: Rapidtransfer, lamenting the cost of funds transfer by Diaspora Nigerians, which he says “has been far too high.”
As if that is not bad enough, Akinwuntan said “the process itself has long been inefficient and burdensome.
“Customers often have to physically visit an agent and yet are left with little or no clarity as to when the funds will actually reach the intended recipient.”
Rapidtransfer, he said was born to remove all of these issues, just as its “affordability will be a game changer in the way that Nigerians can send money to their loved ones.”
“Many Nigerians work elsewhere in Africa, or further afield, and financially support their relatives back home.
“Rapidtransfer is a safe and secure low-cost remittance solution, which ultimately will put more money into the hands of the recipient. This will have a multiplier effect on the Nigerian economy by boosting demand and driving business growth.”
The App, he stressed further, is intuitive, easy to navigate and multi-lingual, offering English, French, Spanish and Portuguese variants, besides providing simple and secure digital on-boarding.
Users, the bank explained in a statement, can choose how and when funds are delivered to the intended beneficiary, with transparent foreign exchange rates prior to each transaction.
Charges, the statement continued, range from 0% to 3% depending on the options the customer selects, adding that the Rapidtransfer mobile app will enable Nigerians anywhere to easily and instantly send money to bank accounts, mobile wallets and cash collection in – and across – 33 African countries and globally.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest recipient of international remittance inflows, as well as the fifth largest remittance recipient globally, receiving US$22bn in 2017, representing 5.6% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
In the first quarter of 2018, the average cost of sending US$200 globally was 7.1%, but remittance services in Sub-Saharan Africa were the costliest in the world at an average cost of 9.4%.
The International Sustainable Development Goal aims to reduce the average transaction cost of remittances to less than 3% of the remittance amount by 2030.
Photo Caption: From left, Charles Kie, immediate past MD, Ecobank Nigeria; John Aboh, Chairman of the bank; Patrick Akinwuntan, the new CEO; Ade Ayeyemi, Group Chief Executive Officer, Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI); and Emmanuel Ikazoboh, Chairman, ETI, pose for a photograph at a dinner for Ecobank directors and launch of Ecobank Rapid Transfer App in Lagos on Friday, October 27, 2018.
