• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Nova Merchant Bank plans medium, long term loan for 3 sectors

Nova Merchant Bank

Nova Merchant Bank Limited has disclosed plans to create medium to long term loan for three sectors of the economy with growth opportunities. The sectors include agriculture, telecoms and healthcare.

The tenor of the loan will range between three and five years, Anya Duroha, managing director said during a virtual meeting on Monday.

The bank last month made market debut with N10 billion bond issue, which was oversubscribed by 300 percent.

Duroha explained that the bank planned to raise N10 billion but realised over N31 billion. The bond issuance is aimed at putting the business on firm footing to achieve its short-term and long-term goals.

“As part of Nova’s strategy, we knew that as a merchant bank with an objective to do developmental financing, we needed to get long term funds to fund long term assets. That was why we went to the capital market to raise funds to finance long term loans for our customers,” he said.

The technology-driven financial institution actively weathered the storm brought by Covid-19 pandemic leveraging technology.

The presence of the Covid-19 virus has continued to change the traditional ways of performing transactions, and even the financial institutions are not left behind in the sweeping changes.

He said every bank or financial institution needs to be very creative about the products that they sell and how they offer these services in the market.

Duroha said in the last three years the bank has done very well, with earnings growing from about N1.2 billion in 2017 to about N5.8billion in 2019, with profitability also on the upswing.

“We understand that what differentiates a bank from the other is the way they offer their services, and that’s why we are deliberate about the things we want to do, and we actively think through them” the CEO noted.

“For Nova Merchant Bank, we are looking at where we have core competence which hovers around advisory services, asset management, and security business.

According to the managing director, although there are myriad of challenges for merchant banks in Nigeria which includes size and active servicing of clients, it is however encouraging to see banks like Nova Merchant Bank thinking long term and positively changing the narrative when it comes merchant banking in Nigeria.