Wema Bank, one of Nigeria’s innovative and digital- driven financial institutions has reassured its esteemed customers and shareholders that it remains standing on strong financial fundamentals and reliable performance metrics, riding on the back of seasoned and astute leadership.
The bank gave the reassurance, through Ademola Adebise, its managing director/chief executive officer, while reacting to a recent publication in the media purportedly alleging a dip in its liquidity status following the unaudited report for 2020 with the MD/CEO saying the report is only a deliberate campaign to create panic among its stakeholders using false news, and therefore should be discountenanced.
“The strength and viability of financial institutions are not measured on the solo performance of one outlier year. The said report based a lot of its false allegations on the unaudited 2020 financial year. But that was a year when COVID-19 induced a lockdown and a disruption of such magnitude that negatively impacted businesses, industries and economies the world over,” Adebise said.
According to the CEO, Wema Bank has continually exhibited not just resilience, but admirable viability over the years with a 30.95 percent increase in earnings recorded in 2019.
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“Then came 2020. Despite the difficulties, we succeeded in achieving impressive results in key areas such as net earnings from fees and commissions while growing the bank’s asset base significantly.”
“That is not all,” the CEO added, explaining that customer credibility in the bank was also accentuated with a massive increase in customer deposits over the previous year. This is an audacious show of confidence from the customers of Wema Bank, he said.
“These performance metrics, among others, are testament to our smart balance sheet optimization approach, which will be affirmed by the time the audited and official 2020 Financial Report is released in the coming weeks,” Adebise said. The CEO also referenced how well the bank’s performance in the said 2020 makes it one of the best performing financial institutions in the land.
“We won the Businessday award for the Best SME Bank of the Year for 2020. A recognition of our unrivalled support for small and medium scale businesses through loans, business advisory, and ease of payments and transactions.”
THE CEO also referred to the recently published 2020 KPMG Customer Experience Survey which showed Wema Bank making significant growth in the retail category, climbing up ten places from the previous year to 2nd position, with an above industry average of 74.6 percent Customer Experience score.
The achievement according to the CEO is a mark of dedication to excellent customer service and refreshing support for all our customer categories.
The KPMG Customer Experience Survey grades banks over six universal pillars of personalization, integrity, expectations, resolution, time & effort and empathy, and Wema Bank showed a mastery of these pillars.
Furthermore, in line with the bank’s sustainability goal of developing digital solutions for societal impact, the CEO said it successfully organized the second edition of Hacka-holics, a radical gathering of developers, web designers and creative thinkers to develop solutions around key themes of education, health, agriculture, fintech, gaming & betting.
