Zenith Bank CEO opens up on plans to operate in France after impressive six-month report
- Zenith Bank CEO stated that the bank is looking to open a branch or two in France
- In an interview, Dr. Onyeagwu noted that earlier preparation helped the bank prepare against the storm of cash scarcity
- He also disclosed the secret of the banks’ impressive performance for the first half of 2023
Zenith Bank is currently processing license for a presence in France. Dr Ebenezer Onyeagwu, Group Managing Director and CEO of Zenith Bank disclosed this in an interview with World Finance.
He stated that this is part of its expansion drive for the next five years.
This follows the bank's astonishing triple-digit growth of 139% in gross earnings, from N404.8 billion recorded in H1 2022 to N967.3 billion in H1 2023.
Source: UGC
Five-year plan for the bank
Commenting on his five year vision for the bank, Onyeagwu said that the bank’s “Project Tiger” would be completed by then.
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This, he said, would give the bank the opportunity to create very massive dexterity in its platforms by leveraging very strong IT capability to extend its franchise and products to address different verticals in the business space.
He said:
“Next five years we also want to expand our franchise – currently we are processing our licence for a presence in France that will see us getting one or two presence in Francophone African markets. We expect that retail and digital banking, in the next five years, should almost be 50/50 with our corporate commercial banking business.
No cash situation
Onyeagwu stated that the short time frame provided by the CBN made the situation of cash scarcity challenging. According to him, the amount of cash in the informal sector was underestimated.
He added that there wasn't an equivalent amount of cash in the new notes that were being issued.
He added that the plan was also intended to persuade banks to start accepting digital payments.
Onyeagwu said it, however, became clear that the infrastructure of Nigerian banks had to be upgraded.
He said:
“In our own case, we already started the upgrade of our infrastructure about 18 months ago. We had to accelerate the completion of our Project Tiger – a completely new enterprise framework putting all the subsidiaries in the same enterprise environment.
What that does for us is that we can harmonise our IT talent and resources. We’ll be able to support our various channels so that we can take on a larger volume of transactions, be able to consume a lot more API.”
Zenith Bank's financial performance
Speaking to the impressive result delivered by the bank, Onyeagwu claims the bank leads in all the key markets where it competes. He said the bank controls about 50 percent of the non-oil export business.
“We’ve also made very significant progress in our retail and digital banking. You see a lot of creativity in terms of our product offering, you also see our staff very bold and audacious. So I would say that what is driving us really is the strong ethos, the culture of the business: don’t just do work, be productive, be innovative, be creative to do something different.”
Earlier, the bank announced the reappointment of Dame Adaora Umeoji as the bank’s Deputy Managing Director.
UBA, Zenith 2 Other Nigerian Banks Record Over N1 Trillion Profit in 6 Months
Four of Nigeria’s biggest banks listed on the Nigerian Exchange(NGX) collectively reported profit after tax of N1.13 trillion in the first half of 2023, Legit.ng had reported.
This represents a 260 percent year-on-year increase when compared to to N315.9 billion reported by the banks same period of 2022.
The banks to have made impressive profit include FBN Holdings, Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO), United Bank for Africa (UBA) and Zenith Bank.
Source: Legit.ng
