Now you’re leaving this country after over five years, what structure would you put in place to attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) into the country?
If you look at what is happening in our company at this moment, additional investments are coming in. Secondly, we have investment firms outside that have indicated interests, but we are taking our time. So, there are two opportunities, one is already given while the other is waiting.
Some of the impacts of CBN policies on your business
As I said earlier, we support the CBN’s drive towards cutting operational costs. One of the ways to do that is for the banks to manage cash as well as cash-in-transit. Everything that the CBN is doing would be in the long term to our benefit. What we do hope is that the CBN would move forward on some of the policies they have already proposed, as that would promote the industry much faster.
Your contribution to Nigeria’s economy in terms of cash management. Would you advocate a common platform for banks in line with the shared services of the CBN, because there is unity in strength?
In the long term, I believe the CBN cash strategy will very much be in line with what you mentioned. We would have a common platform, a shared service providers working under a common platform in providing services to the banks. From a cash perspective as well as cash-in-transit perspective, that will drive down cost. Our calculation is that we can save the banks up to 45 percent of their operational costs if we get to work together or shared services. The impact now is not what it can be but that it would reduce operational costs and have impact on the ordinary man on the street.
Initial challenges in managing a relatively new business
What happened was that we had to put together a Nigerian business with South Africa culture, and we had to try and watch those things. To me, the most difficult thing in the whole merger was understanding the Nigerian way of doing business. The South African way of doing business is different, not because it is right or better, it is just different from the Nigerian way of doing business. So, the most important and difficult thing was understanding the cultural differences, getting the management team of South Africans and Nigerians to work together on the same goal, and we have been able to achieve that, looking at the successes of the company.
How did it start?
We started as a small company with contracts with banks. At the moment, we have five contracts with 16 of the banks in Nigeria. We started with 14 vehicles and at the moment, we have in excess of 70-80 vehicles and by next month (June), we would have an excess of 150 vehicles in our fleet. We were one of the only two companies registered to do cash-in-transit. Two more companies have been added but we are still one of the two companies registered to handle cash management.
So, we also have regular interactions with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and we have played quite a leadership role in Nigeria, in moving this industry forward.
How has the cash-lite policy impacted your business?
The cash-lite policy is a policy we fully support because on the one side, we believe it has reduced the operational costs of banks. It has also changed the profile of our business because we also have to do more work for retailers but we believe it will be a very nice springboard in taking our business forward because it would create a totally new system within the cash environment.
Is your company strategising towards building hubs around Nigeria for logistics reasons and improved operational efficiency?
There are two models you can implement in Nigeria. The first model is where you build big cash centre that is very expensive that will not necessarily provide the banks with cost benefits they can give the end user, the man on the street.
The routes that we are following, which is the trend developing in the world and we are actually in Nigeria, a little ahead of South Africa because we are starting to implement this and that is, moving to the use of smaller cash centres with existing infrastructure.
