FITC CEO Newman honored, harps on financial inclusion

The Managing Director/CEO, Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC), Dr Lucy Newman has reiterated the need for players in the financial services sector to take banking to the grassroots and build lasting wealth for the people.
She spoke during her induction into the 2017 Class of the Money Management Series (MMS), Women of Fortune Hall of Fame (WoFHoF) Initiative in Lagos.
The Chairperson Board of Trustees of the WoFHoF Initiative, Mrs Margaret Orakwusi, said Newman was recognised for the positive impact she is making in the FITC by building capacity and skills for leaders and other key players in the financial services industry. She said the group will continue to celebrate her as a shining example of women who have remained role models and great achievers in their chosen fields against all odds.

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Presenting the award to Newman, President, Women Arise for Change Initiative, Dr Joe Okei-Odumakin described her as a valuable and career-driven woman. “As a chief trainer of the financial-focused institute, Lucy Newman believes in adding value to employees and clients. She motivates women to build successful careers and move from background players to frontrunners in the development of the society,” she said.
Newman, who spoke on the theme: Options and Strategies in Building and Developing Financial Capacity in Women, said there is need to promote financial literacy among children and give them financial education early in life.
With over 29 years working experience, of which about 90 per cent is from the financial services sector, Newman said she benefitted from mentoring through the years, and also had the privilege of several layers of being a mentor to others.

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She said that financial capacity for women is increasingly becoming a priority for policymakers, because it is recognized to contribute to the financial stability, financial inclusion, and to the effective functioning of financial markets, including economic sustainability of the nuclear and extended family units.
Newman also emphasized on the need for integrity in discharging one’s responsibilities. “There is no fraud linked to whatever I have today. I also learn a lot from my mentors,” she said.
According to Newman, she said that the Nigeria Government has taken several commendable steps in developing financial capacity for women. She disclosed that the Federal Government had set aside N1.6 billion for women empowerment programme called the National Women Empowerment Fund, NAWEF, part of government’s Social Investment Intervention Programme known as the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP).
​​The GEEP is a micro-credit programme for men and women, boys and girls; and out of the GEEP fund, a sum of N1.6 billion has been set aside exclusively for women. NAWEF and GEEP are financial inclusion and microcredit programmes.
She praised the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN’s) financial literacy and inclusion policies for women, by implementing several projects to foster financial inclusion in women. “The CBN even went further to develop the Nigerian financial literacy framework (NFLF). The NFLF aims to promote financial literacy to drive the National financial inclusion policy that will ultimately promote economic growth,” she said.
“The bottom-line as a business case is that building the financial capacity of women with strategic and deliberate actions that are measurable and sustained over time has a very high correlation to Human Development Index, which is as a measure of a composite statistic (composite index) of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development,” she said.​

 

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