All is now set for the BusinessDay Banking and Financial Institutions (BAFI) awards.
The annual awards which usually brings together all those that matter in the nation’s corporate world will hold tomorrow, Friday 23rd November, 2018 in Lagos.
Expected at the auspicious event are the presidents of professional associations such as the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), CEOs of issuing houses, top financial industry leaders among others.
The award committee, in response to the demands made by key business leaders, incorporated other key sectors in the financial system in this year’s awards. The reason for the enlarged award categories is due to the need to recognize the critical role other actors in the financial system play in the economy.
These other players include pension funds administrators, pension fund custodians, trustees, registrars, insurance companies, development finance institutions (DFIs), just to mention a few.
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This year’s BusinessDay’s BAFI awards have 29 categories with over 100 nominees that were carefully selected by the award committee based on universally acceptable parameters.
Among the categories for this year’s award are the Bank CEO of the Year, Bank of the Year, Stockbroker of the Year, Mortgage Bank of the Year, Investment Bank of the Year, Assets Manager of the Year, Microfinance Bank of the Year, Best Bank in Retail, Best Bank in SME Financing, Trustees of the Year, Insurance Company of the Year, Best Development Financing Institutions, etc.
The nominees for the bank of the year includes Guaranty Trust Bank(GTB), Stanbic IBTC and Zenith Bank while the nominees for the Bank CEO of the Year award include the CEO of Access Bank, Herbert Wigwe, the CEO of First Bank, Adesola Kazeem and the CEO of Stanbic IBTC bank, Demola Sogunle.
Four nominees were shortlisted for the Investment Bank of the year. These nominees include Zenith Capital, United Capital, Rand Merchant Bank and Coronation Merchant Bank. The nominees for the Trustee of the Year are FBNQuest Trustees, STL Trustees and United Capital Trustees while Jaiz Bank and Sterling Bank were nominated for the non-interest banking service provider of the year.
Coronation Merchant Bank, FBNQuest Merchant Bank, FSDH Merchant Bank and Rand Merchant Bank are nominees for the Merchant Bank of the Year award category.
The Digital Financial Platform of the Year award category has nominees such as ALAT by Wema Bank, Cloud Trade by Eagle Global Markets, I-Invest by Sterling Bank and Invest Now by United Capital.
Credit Direct, RenMoney and Zedvance are the nominees for the Consumer Finance Lender of the Year Category.
Also, the nominees for the Pension Fund Custodian of the Year are First Pension Custodian and Zenith Pension Custodians.
For the Best Managed Mixed Funds of the Year, nominees include AIICO Balanced Funds and United Capital Balanced Funds. Lead Fixed Income Fund, Lotus Capital Fixed Income Funds and SFS Fixed Income Funds are the nominees for the Best Managed Fixed Income Fund of the Year.
The Banking and Financial Institutions awards is held annually by the BusinessDay Conferences and Events department in conjunction with the BusinessDay Research and Intelligence Unit (BRIU). Since its inception, the award has sought to recognize the financial industry’s leading, most innovative and most influential players.
The last edition of the awards that held in 2017 saw Zenith Bank pick the bank of the year award. Fidelity, Sterling, FCMB, Access and Union banks were also recipients of different award categories during the last edition.
The Award Committee considered several parameters before unveiling the nominees for different award categories. The criteria, both qualitative and quantitative, include the availability of financial results and investor’s presentation on bank’s website; loans growth; the type of operating licence; 5-PAT growth; growth in deposits; capital adequacy ratio(CAR); non-performing loans(NPL); liquidity ratio ;return on average assets(ROAA); return on average equity(ROAE); NIM; cost to income ratio; percentage of women in workforce(management); fines paid for contraventions and the percentage complaints resolved relative to the total complaints received in 2017.
Others include the net asset value (NAV) ; weight of agric industry loans relative to total loans; weight of manufacturing loans relative to total loans; weight of construction and real estate loans relative to total loans; employment creation in 2017; value added; loss ratio; industry weight; opinions of selected SMEs on the efficiency of banks‘ SME desks, among others.
KELVIN UMWENI
