XL Africa Group has come to establish itself as a leader in outsourcing, logistics, management and support services, not only in Nigeria but also in Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the USA. And the man behind the company that has grown in leaps and bounds, Charles Nwodo Jr., has revealed how the vision was formed, how it was nurtured, and how its destiny was tied to Tony Elumelu, chairman of United Bank for Africa Group.
According to Charles Nwodo, he met Tony Elumelu during their National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Sokoto State, Nigeria’s northwestern region. Both served together. In 1997, he said, Elumelu invited him to join him at the defunct Crystal Bank.
“Mr Tony Elumelu invited me to join his team at Standard Trust Bank. So in 1997, I joined the then Crystal Bank of Africa, which became Standard Trust Bank. It was just acquired by some private investors as it was one of those distressed banks,” Nwodo recalled in a recent interview.
“The vision was to turn it around, and Tony was looking for unusual talents to achieve that vision. I joined the bank as the pioneer chief investment officer, Standard Trust Bank. I worked there until the bank became stabilized and grew even bigger. At some point, we became the fifth-biggest bank in Nigeria. We then went on to acquire United Bank for Africa (UBA),” he said.
While in UBA as executive director, corporate services, Nwodo was most interested in non-core banking activities like human resources, especially junior staff management; management of drivers, tellers, cleaners, bulk tellers, sales officers, and things like managing cash.
“Things like branch development, where you have to deal with engineers, architects, quality surveyors, and all of that are again not core to the bank. One of the areas of interest to me during my time in the bank was how to galvanize opinion in my bank for the outsourcing of these non-core services, as a way of making the bank more efficient and agile.
“One day, my MD, Mr Tony Elumelu, joked and said to me, ‘If you consider these things to be very important and valid, then why don’t you take it up and do it yourself?’ This registered with me and I made a mental note that if ever I was going to leave banking, that would be exactly what I would do. This is how XL Africa was born,” he recalled.
Nwodo said the stars must have aligned in his favour because at that point it coincided with the decision of UBA to let go of staff they considered a drain on the bank’s talent pool – like drivers, office assistants and others who didn’t have the requisite degrees to progress in the bank through the orderly growth system.
“I was happy to absorb those people and that formed the nucleus of our staff at that time, and the fact that we were able to deploy these people to work for the bank and other banks gave us our starting point.
“In the beginning, there was nothing at all, it was just an idea. We didn’t even have money to pay the rent of our building and I didn’t know where the salaries of the staff would come from at the end of the month, but I had faith. I had 110 percent confidence in our capacity to achieve the impossible. I managed to pass on this same belief to my team at that time and they believed that we could achieve anything that we laid our minds to.
“The first day, we just got together in the office, prayed and I made some promises saying that when we were successful, we would use our proceeds to expand the cause of humanity. At the end of that month, somehow we had money to pay salaries and the rest is history,” he said.
Nwodo recalled that as the banks trusted them with time, they were able to expand with the banks as they set up shop across countries.
“We were trusted because we understood their speed, processes, quality and we had set a standard of service. That was how we started expanding with them through Africa countries and within the federation. Some of these services matured within our capabilities in these areas, and so we decided to spin off these services into businesses of their own, and that was how our subsidiaries evolved,” he said.
According to him, XL Africa Group subsidiaries include XL Outsourcing, Xtra Energy Support Services, XL Express & Logistics, FMX Integrated Services, XL Security & Protection Services and Integrated Cash Management Services.
“Because we had perfected our service offerings in the banking industry, we were able to move these services to other sectors. We moved into oil & gas, telecoms and others. Today, all the subsidiaries are active players in all the sectors that they play in,” Nwodo said.
“In XL Africa, we have over 6,000 members of staff and every day I wake up and think about these people and how my actions directly affect them. I think about their lives, challenges, ambitions, aspirations and how I can help them – how the company can be more relevant in their lives and how they can be better off because of the company,” he said.
Charles Nwodo has an extensive career in stockbroking, investment and commercial banking. He is also founder of the Centre for Entrepreneurship Knowledge Exchange.
His vision for the Centre for Entrepreneurship Knowledge Exchange is to be the foremost organisation equipping young people across Africa with leadership, entrepreneurial and employability skills to take charge in every sphere of life as tomorrow’s leaders.
Charles Nwodo was born October 9, 1962 in Nsukka, Enugu State, but he is originally from Ukehe in Igbo-Etiti Local Government Area of Enugu State.
He started his primary education at Saint Peter’s Primary School, Ukehe, in 1970, after the civil war. Shortly after he started his primary education, his father was rehabilitated into the Nigerian Civil Service, and so his family had to move to Nsukka, hence his primary education was transferred to Central School, Nsukka, where he finished in 1974.
He had his secondary education at College of Immaculate Conception, Enugu, from 1974 to 1979. He was admitted into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1980 where he studied Civil Engineering and graduated in 1985. In 1988, he went back to school and got his MBA.
After his MBA, Nwodo trained as a stockbroker and qualified as a dealing clerk of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). He practiced stockbroking for some years at a company called M&M Securities, who were dealing members of the NSE, until 1997.
He went into banking in 1997 and left in 2003 to start XL Africa Group.
