Interview with Dr. Herbert Wigwe,GMD/CEO, Access Bank Plc.

About Access Bank

Access Bank is a leading financial institution headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. It is driven by strong core values that enable it to continue to deliver strong and sustainable performance. The Bank is in business to help its customers build a sustainable future by offering bespoke products and solutions using a highly-skilled workforce across Sub-Saharan Africa, the United Kingdom, and Asia.

The Bank is licensed to provide international banking services and is renowned for its comprehensive range of financial products and service offerings. The key business segments of the Bank are Corporate and Investment Banking, Commercial Banking, Business Banking, and Personal Banking. Its key customer segments include Telecommunications, Beverages, Manufacturing, Construction, Oil & Gas, Parastatals, High Net worth Individuals, Middle-Income Professionals, and Financial Inclusion Customers.

It takes immense pride in its ability to add value to clients and leverages its unique value proposition to provide innovative solutions across the economic value chain. In deploying products and services, Access Bank adheres to responsible business practices and readily commits resources to social investments in fulfilment of its corporate social responsibility objectives.

The Bank is present in all major commercial centres and cities across Nigeria and operates nine subsidiaries within West Africa, East Africa, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Access Bank also has business offices in China, Lebanon, and India, while Access Bank (UK) Limited operates a branch in the United Arab Emirates.

1Can you please elaborate more on how you are delivering growth to the Nigerian market while ensuring sustainability?

Since 2002, we have applied the triple bottom line focus to our operations, which means that beyond profit, we are very keen on measuring our environmental and social impact. Quite often, this sustainable approach to business ultimately boosts business performance.

Sustainability is at the heart of our business, and we will continue to focus on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals because we recognise our role in preserving the environment in which we operate. Our overall ESG strategy aims to impact society and our business conduct positively through responsible investment. To enable the success of the strategy, we developed an ESRM (Environment, Social, and Risk Management) credit review process and a governance structure.

Based on our understanding of impact investment and the role it plays in addressing social and environmental issues, expanding our market share, and building goodwill, we have prioritized our CSR focus areas to include Health, Education, Sport, Arts, Environment, and Social Welfare. Over the past five years, we have invested about N22 billion in various CSR efforts reaching 1,316 communities, impacting 30,075,356 lives and 793 NGOs. Employees of the Bank have committed over 2.7 million hours of their time and resources through our Employee Volunteering Scheme, with more than 500 communities impacted across the six geo-political zones in Nigeria.

As a result of our commitment to ESG, we have emerged a key player in the Nigerian Sustainable Banking Principles (NSBP) Steering Committee, the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI), the Equator Principles (EP), amongst others. In addition to driving real change through social investments over the years, we have been able to consistently identify and create roadmaps that have increasingly delivered long-term sustainable development in investment and financial transactions.

Through our lending and investment activities, coupled with our procurement practices, we have made significant indirect sustainability impacts whilst aiding the development of economies. With the understanding that climate change will have a social and economic impact on our customers, Access Bank ensures that we properly manage risk while capturing new markets. We imagine the endless possibilities that the future holds. Hence, with creativity, innovation, and speed, we are making vital contributions to creating a truly sustainable future while delivering value to all stakeholders.

2Do you believe that mobile banking application penetration will grow the market for digital banking in Africa faster?

Yes, the increased penetration of mobile banking applications will significantly grow the market for digital banking in Africa.

Undoubtedly, COVID-19 has had a huge impact on almost every aspect of life, and financial services have been especially hit throughout this crisis. Consumer behaviour has been forced to change due to the risk of infection, which has shifted the old dynamics in terms of communication and access to traditional services.

In the past, African markets experienced steady economic growth. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected in 2020 that Sub-Saharan Africa would witness an economic growth of 3.6%. However, since COVID-19 struck, the outlook has been less than favourable, with an economic contraction estimate of 1.9% in Sub- Saharan Africa in 2021.

Despite the declining projections, results over the last 24 months have shown that the financial inclusion barriers have been slowly, yet steadily improving in Africa, thanks to the democratisation of financial services. Mobile device penetration in Africa has been increasing exponentially in the last few years, and according to GSMA reports, in 2020, 80 percent of the 800 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa have a mobile device, partly due to the strides mobile banking had had in the region.

Although digital banking had once been streamlined as a platform for the younger African generation, consumers of all ages have since embraced the idea. This has ushered us into the greatest acceleration of digital banking in history and Africa isn’t left out.

During the pandemic, Access Bank accelerated the execution of its digital strategy and delivered optimised and uninterrupted services to customers during the period. The Bank delivered unparalleled and uninterrupted digital banking services through its various channels leading to a spike in the volume of digital transactions. Similarly, the Bank experienced an unprecedented increase in the onboarding of new customers.

In H1 2021, Access Bank’s gross revenue grew by 14% YoY to N450.6 billion, comprising 71% in interest income and 29% in accessbankplc.com/sustainability non-interest income. This strong and diversified revenue growth was driven by extensive retail banking growth. There was the increased velocity of transactions, well-executed trading strategy, optimized value chain of wholesale banking customers, prioritized margin growth through efficiencies, just as customers were delighted at every touchpoint – including delivering bestin-class services through our digital platform, Access More.

3What are the possible reasons in your opinion for people still being apprehensive of digital banking? Can you talk about your digital product AccessX?

As Andrew Smith once said, “People fear what they don’t understand and hate what they can’t conquer.”

The constant evolution of the digital banking processes coupled with the low level of financial literacy in the African market explains why many individuals may still be apprehensive about the adoption of digital banking services.

In a bid to provide top-notch digital service to our customers and demonstrate the best of innovative solutions through self-service banking, Access Bank Plc launched AccessX, or as we refer to it, our experience centre.

This experience centre is a one-stop technology hub where all our customers are taken on a digital tour spanning from Artificial Intelligence to Robotics and Smart Data. AccessX is an additional touchpoint that provides us an opportunity to demonstrate the best of our innovative solutions through self-service banking.

The digital hub allows customers to address all issues concerning login access, PIN issuance, limit maintenance, channels set up and onboarding, device compatibility as well as One-TimePassword (OTP) generation. Users can also make enquiries on digital banking setup, Bank Verification Number (BVN) maintenance, transfer charges, and related issues. In addition, AccessX enables customers to get a speedy resolution to all debit card or ATM issues, especially as it relates to withdrawal, blockage, and activation of damaged, lost, or stolen cards.

Unique to AccessX is the ‘Queue Management System’ – a unique service that aims to improve service turnaround time and overall customer experience. The centre achieves this by using an artificial intelligence system that informs the engineer how many customers are in a queue and calculates the time each employee at the experience centre spends attending to a customer.

4Can we get some insight on initiatives aimed at supporting women entrepreneurs within and outside the Bank?

At Access Bank, we recognise the importance of maintaining and increasing the diversity of our workforce. Our people and culture are crucial to the success of our business, and it is our ambition to be the most accessible, inclusive, and sought-after employer.

We want Access Bank to be a workplace where everyone is valued as an individual and has equal access to opportunities. We work to ensure that colleagues are welcomed, respected, supported, and able to be their authentic selves. To this end, we have set up various initiatives which include mentoring, training, and networking events under the umbrella of the Access Women Network (AWN) – formed to support, develop, promote, and retain female employees in the Bank. We understand that gender equality can only be achieved with a focus on both genders. AWN provides a support network especially to all female employees, ensuring gender equality through policies such as the human rights policy, paternity leave, 6 months’ maternity leave as well as leadership programmes.

Access Bank through the “W” Initiative, our banking proposition for women, has provided over 1 million women with opportunities to benefit from our financial and non-financial offerings like market access, capacity building programmes, access to discounted health and business financing. We are using our “W” Power Loan to bridge the financing gap in women’s businesses, giving over 1,200 women access to $30 million in financing so far.

Over the last 14 years, the initiative has developed a strong presence in Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, and Zambia with an array of offers tailored to meet the diverse career, business, and lifestyle needs of over 16 million diverse female customers. In the wake of the pandemic, a virtual desk (W Cares) was introduced to manage gender-focused complaints and enquiries. To help facilitate women’s access to discounted finance, we stimulated economic expansion by partnering with ESG (Enterprise Sustainability Group) to simplify loan application processing and tracking for women-in-business. This resulted in over N8 billion ($20 million) debt financing investment in more than 1,700 women-owned enterprises and N18.8 billion ($47 million) growth in lending to 750,000 female customers.

Leveraging initiatives like the Womenpreneur Pitch-a-ton Africa – which in its second year recorded 39,982 applications spanning 8 African countries. The Bank provides business capacity building for female entrepreneurs by giving them access to internationally recognised education and funding for economically viable ideas.

Our leadership is actively involved in the initiation and implementation of strategies, policies, programmes, and resources for diversity and inclusiveness. We remain focused on improving gender diversity at all levels, focusing on the workplace, marketplace, and community. Through participation in several external partnerships, we consistently promote quality across the industry and wider business environment.

5What benefits does an individual get while associating with the Access Bank Group network exclusively?

At Access Bank, we understand the unique banking needs of our business clients and we are fully committed to providing them with world-class, innovative, competitive, and flexible banking solutions to support their business goals.

Access Bank, by establishing footprints across the major trading corridors on the continent, is an unrivalled partner for stakeholders looking to trade more efficiently. Our robust portfolio of product offerings guarantees increased business efficiency by reducing manual processes. We focus on optimising our digital offerings to help us administer our core operational infrastructures more efficiently. This means that our customers have access to the widest range of financial offerings on the continent.

6

What areas do you see growth in the next 5 years for your Bank?

Over the next 5 years, Access Bank will be the clear-cut digital leader in Africa even as we move closer to becoming Africa’s Payment Gateway to the World.

As we continue to expand our retail banking across major trading corridors in Africa, we will consolidate our earnings across all income lines, driven by a strong focus on consumer lending, payments and remittances, digitisation of customer journeys, and customer acquisition at scale. Furthermore, the Access Bank Group looks forward to another decade of growth as we begin the process of evolving into a holding company (HoldCo). The non-operating HoldCo, to be known as Access Holding Company Plc, would serve as the parent company for the Group – Access Bank and our many subsidiaries. The new structure would facilitate the Bank’s growth and expansion across Africa, ease consolidated financial strength, expedite capital and liquidity growth, provide flexibility to accommodate leverage with minimal risk to regulatory rations, and help to unburden the Bank from oversight functions and responsibilities of managing the subsidiaries, thus focusing on our core operations.

This is in addition to the Bank’s existing commitment to sustainable business practices and demonstration of our ability to re-engineer the face of Africa. This, we intend to achieve by engaging in transactions, processes, and partnerships that enable future generations to meet their needs. Access Bank is well on its way to establishing itself as the world’s most respected African Bank.

accessbankplc.com/sustainability