Financing corporate businesses, the Heritage Bank way

The importance of corporate businesses in the country cannot be overemphasised; apart from the fact that it significantly contributes to the country’s GDP, it also decreases the rate of unemployment, which is the major cause of corruption and robbery. Part of the responsibilities of deposit money banks is to play a mediatory role in terms of providing facilities for business growth.

The Nigerian corporate market consists large locally and foreign owned/multinational companies with well-defined organisational structures and turnover above the MSME threshold of N500 million in assets. These corporate organisations cut across various sectors of the economy ranging from telecommunications, oil and gas, transportation, manufacturing, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), real estate and construction.

Corporate entities usually have a range of financing needs such as treasury services, investment banking and advisory services, credit financing and international trade services. These are sophisticated operators which require sound and up to date financial solutions to meet their needs locally and internationally.

The operations of this segment of Nigeria’s economy constitute a large portion of credit requirements from the banking sector and continue to remain a key contributor to policy formulation and various economic round tables across the country. Although various banks categorise corporate business differently, most banks have dedicated strategic business units to cater to the needs of this segment.

However, Heritage Bank continues to support the corporate business segment of the Nigerian economy despite the changing economic situation of the country. The Bank is committed to delivering distinctive financial services in terms of deposits and lending to our customers even in this hard time.

“We at Heritage Bank are aware of the great impact of supporting corporate businesses and will keep rendering our top notch services to both small and large corporate entities”, Ifie Sekibo, managing director/CEO, said.

The Heritage Bank franchise has been widely accepted by corporate customers in the Nigerian business environment despite the bank’s few years of operations. Heritage Bank has participated in major projects in various sectors such as telecommunications, power, real estate, transportation, and construction.

“Our experience has shown that major success factor for this company is in the proper organisation of their value chain to maximize value,” Sekibo said, while speaking to Nigerian corporate market at ICA Credit Industry 2016 award.

Heritage Bank has partnered with these corporates to ensure that the various activities along the value chain are able to operate efficiently by deploying its traditional banking products such as overdrafts, bank guarantees, international trade serves and electronic products ranging from payroll solutions, card solutions, and electronic transfers among others.

“Our innovative solutions have greatly impressed our corporate customers. These solutions have helped our customers tackle a lot of problem associated with running their organisations; part of these include our innovation solution of paying staff salaries of organizations, providing credit cards to corporate customers and their staff,” Sekibo added.

HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE