My focus is to position Fidelity Bank as one of Nigeria’s leading financial institutions —Onyeali-Ikpe

The Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer (MD/CEO) Fidelity Bank Plc, Mrs. Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe, is leading the financial institution through a significant evolution of business culture with the primary objective of improving operational efficiency and expanding market share.

Currently, Nneka has her eyes fixed on positioning the bank as one of Nigeria’s leading financial institutions, which leverages automation and robotics to replace manual and repetitive processes.

Since assuming office on January 1 2021, the bank’s first female CEO and MD has outlined a seven-point agenda to move the bank further in its quest to become a tier-1 bank that is well-positioned to outlive the competition and serve well into the future.

Mrs Onyeali-Ikpe recently hosted a media parley where she shared her strategy for repositioning Fidelity Bank going forward. CHIMA NWOKOJI was there and brings excerpts of her vision for the mid-tier lender.

Can you give an overview and timeline for Fidelity Bank’s agenda?

Fidelity Bank’s seven-point agenda focuses on brand architecture, brand building and refresh, talent development and transformation, product and service delivery, agility and performance discipline, digital transformation, and regulatory compliance.

The bank intends to embark on an innovation drive through the implementation of new processes, techniques. The bank is also executing fresh ideas to ensure continuous process improvement, reduce cost to serve, increase competitiveness, improve brand recognition and value, build new partnerships and relationships, drive turnover, and increase profitability.

Our brand refresh is aimed at increasing top-of-mind awareness of the Fidelity brand by external and internal stakeholders.

Our workforce transformation is to create a future readily supported by a high performing and empowered workforce. This will be achieved by deepening the skills and competencies of staff across the bank, entrenching a culture of high performance, and embedding new ways of working in the bank.

So far, the commencement of capacity building training for staff and senior management training are some of the initiatives implemented.

We also have the third one, service excellence which is intended to build brand loyalty through personalised and seamless customer experience delivery. This is already underway with the award-winning virtual assistant IVY. This revolutionary chatbot handles simple tasks like account opening to complex tasks such as complaint resolution, bill payment and transferring users to a live agent, loans, fixed deposit applications, and answering random questions.

In terms of digital transformation, we are looking at an end-to-end digitisation across all facets of the business. In line with this, the bank has launched a novel digital service —Pay Yourself —which revolutionised payday for salary earners and Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SMEs).

Another pillar is Performance Discipline. We are focused on strong fundamentals, asset quality, and strategic cost management. Initiatives already carried out in this regard include; The Policy Familiarisation Program, a capacity-building project geared towards building a knowledgeable and versatile staffs network/raising subject matter experts in all business areas that kicked off in March.

The One Culture Project- which was initiated to reinforce enabling behaviours and value systems towards fulfilling the bank’s goals. In the same way, there is what we call Project Alpha. This is aimed at helping the bank develop a robust and holistic learning and development framework for all staff.

Accelerated Growth which will drive aggressive market penetration and business diversification; this will be achieved through deeper penetration in key retail markets.

Other initiatives geared towards deepening growth include; accelerated play in the SME segment, renewal of institutional banking, and drive for transaction-based propositions in corporate banking.

We believe that with this seven pronged agenda, Fidelity Bank is well on its way to leading the sector while revolutionising Nigeria’s financial landscape

How is the bank positioned for Diaspora Investment into Africa?

When you talk about investment coming to Africa, Nigeria must be in that conversation.

Even though Nigeria has its challenges, the opportunities are more as the challenges are there but Investments are still being made in Nigeria.

The sectors that contribute so little to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) present opportunities for investors to tap into.

For diaspora investors the only challenge they have is repatriating their funds but as you know, a lot is been done to ensure smooth and cost-effective funds repatriation to Nigeria.

However, we have seen a lot of investment coming in from the infrastructure side. The same in power sector, education and health sectors and they are growing rapidly.

It is therefore impossible to do business in Africa and ignore Nigeria because of the simple fact that we have over two hundred million; people and skilled workforce.

Are you considering recapitalisation? 

What I can say about this is that our options are open at the moment. We are looking at organic growth and like I said our doors are open.

What are you doing about SMEs and export and what strategies do you have for achieving 7.5 per cent of deposit share in the industry?

There are customers that have several businesses that they do through our accelerated growth strategy.  For every customer that we give loan, we expect a certain level of patronage from him or her. The easiest way to grow your customer base is to ensure that you do the right thing.  Our agency banking helps us increase our customer base. We also have all manner of partnerships, even FinTechs.

What is your outlook and focus in the next financial year?

Our outlook revolves around some sectors of the economy that have shown signs of growth. What we have realised with COVID-19 experience is that there are areas of the economy that recorded accelerated growth.  There was accelerated growth in ICT, Healthcare and agriculture among others. We have also seen as accelerated growth in infrastructure renewal especially on Roads, Bridges, Railways and Power. There was also a lot of growth in telecoms so in terms of outlook; we will be focusing on some of these areas.

What is the magic behind Fidelity Bank’s financial figures?

It is about Focus. I have listed our pillars for you. We are focused on performance discipline. We are focused on the staff because a happy workforce delivers good results. I am passionate about driving profitability. When I joined Fidelity Bank, Lagos and Southwest were not doing very well. But I came in and turned this around.

One key area is making sure you have regular performance appraisals because anything that does not get measured is not done. We also provide all the tools that are needed for our staff to excel.

What is your Experience as first female CEO of Fidelity Bank?

My experience so far is that businesses grow organically. I have worked in different departments of banks; treasury, retail and corporate banking. All these come with a lot of experience, but the hands-on experience is stronger than the one you read in a book. A customer that is treated well, you know, will bring another one.  You have to focus on customer satisfaction. Working in Lagos and Southwest gave me good experience that helped in smooth assumption of the position of CEO.  I have known the strengths and weaknesses of our staff over the last six years. We have built an amazing relationship unlike where somebody from outside will be brought in to be the CEO.

As a woman, you need to work hard so that you can show that you can do it for the men to accept that fact. However, what keeps me awake at night are those numbers that tier one banks are doing.

So, I know that we have what it takes to do it and we will get there. I want to take Fidelity Bank to tier one bank and that is what I want to be remembered for. We are focused to become a tier one Bank by 2025. This will be achieved through Four Pillars: We intend to attain 7.5 per cent on the deposit risk assets and total assets. We intend to return 20 per cent RoE by 2025 to our shareholders. We also want to attain less than six per cent on our Cost to Income (CIR) in 2023.

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