Baobab Microfinance Bank Limited plans to disburse the sum of N28 billion in 2019, which is a 40 percent increase above N20 billion targeted in 2018.
The bank in 2018 disbursed a total of N14 billion out of the targeted amount, based on customer demand. Meanwhile, the bank added 22,000 customers to increase its customer base to 87,000 in 2018 from 65,000 recorded in 2017.
“You will see that we have consistently grown. By my estimate, every year we grow on the average 60 percent in our loan book and in our deposit and everything and this we intend to maintain”, Kazeem Olanrewaju, managing director/CEO, said on the sideline of the bank’s customers forum in Lagos.
The bank is determined to make business much more convenient for the customer to do with the bank. In view of this, he said the bank is going more digital so that customers can do their transaction seamlessly wherever they are.
“It has been implemented in two of our subsidiaries in other countries and this is going to be done in Nigeria. Now aside from this, we have also introduced a whole lot of products to take care of variety of customers”.
Such products include micro housing loan, TAKA, which is electronic small loans, and also, the bank can give moratorium, three months, a month or two months as the case may be.
“All these are put together to make sure that the customers have a very good experience and have an excellent experience with Baobab, so our plan for the future is to be able to render excellent service that will take our customer to the top. The growth of our customer is indirectly the growth of the company, so today the customer is at the centre of everything that we are doing and that is going to continue”, Olanrewaju added.
He disclosed that the bank’s board has set September this year to make sure that the bank is fully recapitalised to N5 billion, in line with the directive of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“Let me also say that all the shareholders are very eager to make their contribution. I think it is just a matter of how is it going to be done. Interestingly, I have four banks in Nigeria who said let’s pay the remaining part of your capital. They made that proposal to us. We also even have the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) saying they want to do this for us. We have a lot of capital firms who said they want to raise bond and all the rest. So, it’s given, but when I look at the performance of the company in the last one year, I can tell you that our earning has grown more than 500 percent. So the shareholders will be interested in taking up their right and you know by regulation we have up to April 2020 to recapitalise. The other thing that we are looking at is that given what has happened last year, by the time we end this year, its most likely that we will be close to that capital base even with our profit without anybody making any contribution.
Hope Moses-Ashike
