ordinary share of 50 kobo dividend payable to shareholders whose names
appeared on the bank’s Register of Members as at the close of business on
April 17, 2015 as earlier proposed by the directors of the bank for the financial
year ended December 31, 2014. With this, Fidelity Bank has, for 10
years, consistently paid out dividends to its shareholders.
Speaking yesterday at the bank’s annual general meeting held at the Civic
Centre, Lagos, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Fidelity Bank,
Nnamdi Okonkwo noted that the 2014 performance is a positive reinforcement of
the medium term strategic objectives which are anchored on the following
pillars: improving the efficiency of the balance sheet; growing the retail and SME
businesses; focusing on niche corporate banking segments; increased
migration of customers to electronic channels and improving the customer
experience across all service channels.
He explained that the bank has a solid platform for growth, underpinned by
strong customer loyalty and significant investments in physical and electronic
distribution channels. “Our retail banking strategy gathered increased
momentum in 2014 with the bank acquiring over 471,000 new retail customers,
consumer loans growing by over 21 per cent and core low-cost retail deposit by
18 per cent which lowered our average cost of customer deposits”.
Pointedly, the bank boss said that operational efficiency improved as the bank
leveraged on alternative electronic channels to reduce the cost to serve adding
that the efficiency gains saw operating expenses, excluding regulatory costs,
grow by just 3 percent in 2014 which was significantly below the inflation rate.
On sustaining efficiency and cost effective service quality, Okonkwo explained
that the bank communicated and implemented a service programme centered on
building a superior customer service franchise on the back of product innovation
and service turnaround time early in 2014. He stressed that the programme was
designed to improve the quality of services by speeding up processes and
reducing response time to customer enquiries/complaints. To achieve the
objective, the bank Chief said that the bank flattened its sales structure to
improve its speed to market, deepened customer interactions and centralized
some of the processes previously performed in branches which availed branch
staff more time for attending to customer needs and enquiries.
“We have also restructured our sales force into a flatter and more nimble
organisation which is closer to the customers and aggressive enough to drive
our market share aspirations in order to achieve our corporate strategy”. On
cost optimization, Okonkwo said that the bank is centralizing its processing
functions which will reduce cost to serve and improve uniformity of customer
service.
He revealed that Management’s resolve to support the productive sector of the
economy and grow a new generation of passionate entrepreneurs was further
accentuated with the creation of the Fidelity Managed SME team that provides
financing, business advisory services, capacity development and shared
technology platform to SMEs.
“In recognition of our leadership role in the MSME banking space, we were
invited to partner with the Federal Government and its agencies on various SME
schemes. The Bank of Industry Limited (BOI) selected our bank as one of the 10
SME friendly banks it is partnering with to finance SMEs. The Central Bank of
Nigeria also appointed our bank as one of the deposit money banks to serve on
its working committee on the creation of a Mobile Collateral Registry for SMEs in
Nigeria.”
Earlier the Chairman of the bank, Chief Christopher Ezeh had in his opening
remark noted the exceptional performance of the Bank in spite of the economic
whirlwind occasioned by the drop in the global oil prices. “As you have noticed,
developments in the international markets presented some challenges to both
the real sector and the financial sector of our economy”, adding that “It is,
however, important to state that your bank’s performance was within
expectations and that its growth potentials are promising”. He thanked the
Shareholders for their unflinching loyalty and support and continued business
patronage and assured them of the safety of their investment
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