One of the major strategies of Heritage bank after the acquisition of Enterprise bank was to work with its partners to grow their business and take them to stock market. To achieve this, Ifie Sekibo, managing director, in this interview with Hope Moses-Ashike said the bank must strive to be listed on the market through which it can meet the needs of its stakeholders. Excerpt.
What is your idealogy about success?
As a business man I believe in people. People are the success of any business. In getting to where I am today, I didn’t do it alone, I worked with different tenacious teams to achieve goals and while I am not certain on what you mean by helper of destiny, I believe in rewarding excellence. I understand success is not me alone doing well, it is also measured by how well the people surrounding you are doing, it is measured by how the people you work with are doing, and it is measured on how well the people you work for are doing. My success is my people’s success and my people’s success is my success that’s my ideology.
Plans for Heritage Bank
The plans for Heritage Bank are unfolding. It is a gradual process. With the acquisition of Enterprise Bank Limited, Heritage Bank is now a bigger and better bank. One of our major strategies is to work with our partners to grow their business and take them to the stock market. To achieve this as a service organization in the business of banking, we must be in the stock market ourselves. That is our direction.
What are the success tools?
My tools for success are People and good processes but most importantly people because people drive the processes. I believe that Success is largely hinged on “People” who have been able to key into my vision making it a common goal; People who have invested their time, efforts, ideas and energy- armed with good system processes and with lasting support from partnerships built over time.
The role of leadership in entrepreneurship
As a leader who has met and worked with people with different values, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, cultural values, work habits, goals, ambitions and dreams. Because of this incredible diversity of human resources, it is very necessary though sometimes difficult for a diplomatic leader like myself to form these people into high-performing teams. Nobody wins by being Autocratic, hence Diplomacy is key. That way you are set to tackle issues that arise from being an entrepreneur.
What is the philosophy of the bank?
Heritage Banks philosophy is to Create, Preserve and Transfer wealth across generations. We are in the business to provide service per excellence and to grow with our customers. We are here to help our customer’s create wealth for themselves, assist our partners preserve their wealth and guide them in transferring it to the next generation. We achieve this with tailor made affordable products which offer Zero COT charges and high interest yields, amongst others for our partners.
Measures in place for sustainability of achievements
Innovative service! To us, innovation isn’t only about creating something new, it is also about taking something that exists and transforming it into something bigger and better. As a new entrant to the banking sector, our advantage is that we are starting from where our competition has stopped while being able to avoid all the mistakes they made along the way. Having imbibed a culture of continuous innovation, I’m confident of Heritage Bank’s ability to adapt to envisaged customer and sector changes.
Advice to the government in relation to agricultural sector
The Nigerian Government has done a lot for the agricultural sector. The government has carried our various transformation agendas like NIRSAL- a new innovative mechanism targeted at de-risking lending to the agricultural sector and designed to provide the singular transformational and one bullet solution to break the seeming jinx in Nigeria’s agricultural lending and development, Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) which represents a policy and pragmatic shift within the existing Fertilizer Market Stabilization Programme and it puts the resource constrained farmer at its centre through the provision of series of incentives to encourage the critical actors in the fertilizer value chain to work together to improve productivity, household food security and income of the farmer.
There is also the Staple Crops Processing Zones, establishment of commodity marketing corporations around each of the agricultural commodities and let’s not forget the CBNs Single digit loans which also caters for SMEs in the agricultural sector. I believe all the government needs to do more is simply communicate.
Suggestion on actualisation of evolution of new breed of leaders
The nature of every ecosystem is change. Everything that works within an ecosystem must evolve and this include rules, best practices, business models, mind-sets and the leaders themselves who drive the ecosystem. The rapid-fire changing world of the twenty-first century presents new challenges – and new opportunities – for leadership. The ideas, concepts, and attitudes that once drove the nation to success need to be updated. To be an authentic, inspiring leader, the young people of today must dramatically increase their chances of success as they meet head-on modern society’s issues by cultivating new insights and perspectives.
About yourself
I am an alumni of the University of Science & Technology, Port Harcourt and the Harvard Business School. I also hold an Owner President Management certificate from HBS Boston. I am a member of several institutes in Nigeria like Chartered Institute of Management, Accountants, and Credit Administration to mention a few. I started my professional career in the River State Audit Department and worked in KPMG, Elf Nigeria, Investment Banking and Trust co. and Rims Merchant Bank. In 2003 I became the Group Managing Director of International Energy Insurance and today I am the MD/CEO Heritage Bank.
