“Nigeria has thoroughly recovered from the credit crunch, leaving its economy much healthier than ever before”, says Peter Amangbo, Group Managing Director and CEO of Zenith Bank. While the country sustained impressive levels of growth over the last decade, it was also badly hit by the 2008 global financial crisis. Foreign investors deserted the country, while exports predictably suffered as other countries reined in their spending.
However, the country has enjoyed a strong recovery since, thanks in part to a banking industry that is helping to finance a modern and dynamic economy. Zenith Bank has taken a central role in this recovery, helping to support individuals and businesses during this period of growth.
Established in 1990, the bank has its headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria and also has more than 500 branches and business offices in major commercial centres in all of the 36 states of Nigeria. The bank has an increasing international presence too.
Sustained growth
Although Nigeria’s economic recovery has been relatively successful, as a major oil producer it is inevitably susceptible to setbacks due to fluctuations in the global price of oil. Yet despite these fluctuations, Amangbo believes fervently in the fundamental underlying strength of the Nigerian economy. His loyal belief is shared by other observers and commentators on Nigerian economic matters. There is an overall consensus that Nigeria has excellent prospects for sustained economic growth, and that this potential sustained growth is driven by the key non-oil sectors. These include, in particular, agriculture, information and communication technology (ICT), trade and services.
5.5%
Estimated growth of Nigerian oil production, 2015
These non-oil sectors, just like the oil sector itself, naturally depend on a healthy financial sector to ensure an efficient and cost-effective banking and payments infrastructure. Zenith Bank is playing a crucial role in Nigeria’s successful economic recovery by bringing banking services – especially state-of-the-art electronic banking – to an ever-wider customer base in the country and so in effect is helping to ensure that the fruits of the Nigerian economic recovery are being felt by an ever-wider breadth of the population.
Currently the low global oil price is an unavoidable inhibiting factor in the Nigerian economic recovery. Nigeria’s finance minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said on December 17 2014 that she now expected the Nigerian economy to grow at 5.5 percent in 2015, rather than the previous estimate of 6.4 percent. Nigeria is currently, and understandably, trying to reduce its dependence on oil. In 2013, the estimated growth in real GDP in Nigeria was an estimated 7.4 percent, up from 6.7 percent in 2012.
Okonjo-Iweala urged Nigerians “to begin thinking of the country [as] a non-oil country.” Yet she pointed out that Nigeria’s oil production level is 2.27 million barrels per day and that even an estimated growth rate of 5.5 percent for 2015 “is still one of the fastest growth rates we’re experiencing in the world today.”
While acknowledging the influence the global oil price has on the Nigerian economy, Zenith Bank’s Amangbo sees the economic outlook for Nigeria as extremely positive, despite the fall in oil prices.
Investor interest
Nigeria’s population of around 174 million – making it the most populous country in Africa – means that the retail consumer market is clearly enormous and brimming with exciting opportunities.
Official figures for 2013, released by Nigeria’s Statistics Bureau, stated that the country’s GDP was $503bn in 2013, well ahead of South Africa’s GDP (admittedly for a country of only around 53 million) of $350bn.
Amangbo emphasises that Nigeria’s successful economic growth is occurring across commercial and industrial sectors. He is also excited by Nigeria’s investment potential for both domestic and foreign investors. “I don’t find it surprising that investors want to take part in Nigeria’s economy when you consider the exciting potential of our economy, our very high population, which means we have very substantial consumer markets, and our excellent infrastructures that make investment easy and ensure a good flow of information to investors themselves”, says Amangbo.
“At Zenith Bank, helping domestic and foreign investors is one of our strongest areas of activity. We think our devotion to customer service, our passionate enthusiasm for making sure that the services we offer are exactly what customers want and our ability to bring new services and new facilities to customers makes us the bank of choice for investors – both within Nigeria and beyond our borders – who want to maximise their knowledge of the investment potential of Nigeria and also maximise their returns.”
Certainly, Amangbo’s claims for his bank are much more than mere rhetoric. In 2013, Zenith Bank was chosen by The Banker magazine as Bank of the Year, by World Finance magazine as Best Commercial Bank in Nigeria, by CFI as Best Commercial Bank, and by KPMG as Most Customer Focussed Bank in Nigeria.
An area of the Nigerian banking sector where Zenith Bank has especially distinguished itself is in the huge contribution its commitment, energies and love of innovation have brought to the success of Nigeria in e-banking. Nowadays, Nigeria is being seen not only in Africa, but also worldwide, as a superb example of this success.
The e-banking impetus in Nigeria can be explained partly by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s encouragement of cashless transactions in order to reduce corruption. Yet the success of e-banking in the country is also partly explained by the hurtling transformation of the economy – especially in the power, oil, consumer good and agricultural industries – which is naturally increasing demands for banking services in general and e-banking in particular.
Yet there is a key third factor too: the success of e-banking in Africa’s most populous nation is also due to the sheer energy of Nigeria’s most influential and far-sighted bankers, like Zenith Bank’s Amangbo and co-founder of Zenith Bank Jim Ovia, who is now the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Ovia has almost three decades of banking experience. He set out to create a bank that would become a major player and have a pivotal role in the Nigerian banking industry. His success in fulfilling this mission is very much the story of Zenith Bank’s success today.
Strategic banking
An important feature of Zenith Bank’s approach to its markets that is seen throughout its entire operations is the bank’s belief in the vital necessity for a bank to be completely customer-focused. Yet the bank goes beyond this, also projecting and communicating a clear and explicit recognition of the fact that customers are all different – as Zenith’s website says: ‘everyone is different so one size never fits all.’
Zenith Bank is renowned in Nigeria for the calibre of service it offers businesses, from small businesses to major corporations. Again, the range of bank accounts offered by Zenith caters to the correspondingly broad range of different types of business customers, ranging, for example, from sole proprietorship accounts to partnership accounts and of course, major business accounts for larger organisations.
The Zenith philosophy is that businesses should consider their bank account a business asset. The bank justifies this by saying that when a business organisation considers the advantages that come with a Zenith Corporate Account and the benefits this account offers to the business, along with the support and guidance the corporate organisation will receive from its Zenith Relationship Manager, the corporate organisation would be right to consider the bank account a valuable business asset.
This gentle, but compelling insistence on the part of Zenith that its accounts are not merely facilities but actual assets for its customers, is one more example of how the bank brings an innovative philosophy and approach to its entire operations and to customer service in particular.
Amangbo is especially proud of the bank’s highly successful record in pioneering digital banking in Nigeria itself. Zenith Bank has scored several firsts over its competition in the deployment of ICT infrastructure that deliver exciting and innovative products to meet the needs of its customers who are themselves, of course, increasingly active in using the widest range of ICT. Zenith Bank is a leader in the deployment of new channels of banking technology and that the Zenith brand has become synonymous with the deployment of state-of-the-art technologies in banking.
This kind of success, innovation and sheer commitment to meeting customer needs is, Amangbo argues, precisely why the bank has achieved such great success. He says that the organisation is driven by a culture of excellence, strict adherence to global best practice, and a complete commitment to customers.
“We at Zenith have combined our vision for what a major bank should be like with our banking expertise, our cutting-edge technology, our utter focus on the customer and the customer’s interests, and we have created products and services that not only meet customer’s expectations but actually anticipate them. This is exactly why this bank has thrived and why it nowadays grows wealth for its customers and also for its shareholders.
“At Zenith Bank we are already playing a major and crucial role in Nigeria’s economic recovery and success and I firmly believe that Zenith will make an ever-increasing positive contribution to the Nigerian economy.”
