Access Bank Plc’s commitment towards financial inclusion is gaining impetus, following its partnership with the agents in rolling out agency banking brand/logo in Access Closa.
A banking agent is defined as an authorized third party (a retail or postal outlet) contracted by a financial institution to process clients’ transactions.
However the alternate delivery channels are limited in the area of human-to-human engagements which still command premium in the mind of customers. The gap will be bridged by agency banking model which seeks to enable branches to focus more on more complex customer obligations.
The bank on Tuesday introduced its omni-channel agency banking application which customers can access via mobile application, web, POS, and USSD. It promises to redefine the way clients have been doing before now.
Access Bank has over 6.5 million Mobile Apps, over 7.1 cards, over 600 branches, 3,134 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), 26,065 Point of Sale (PoS) terminals.
“The conversation we have been having over the last couple of months was how we can truly transform our economy,” Roosevelt Ogbonna, group deputy managing director, said.
“Financial inclusion is something we want to champion and drive. We have credible partners across the country who are closer to the market, understand their locality better than any bank would do and these we are calling our partners and relying on to be able to drive financial inclusion conversation,” he said.
Speaking at the bank’s agency banking forum in Lagos, Ogbonna said, “Today we start a new face of agency relationship. I think it is the one that is truly embedded in partnership. So this is not about Access bank. It is about our agents, celebrating, appreciating them for the work that they have done. We are now about to take to whole different level and we need you to hold us to account and push us to be better. If the platforms are not working, let us have that conversation”.
“We are going to grow our customer base and working with you to grow the customer base, we grow the economy because there is more conversation around financial inclusion,” Michael Ogbaa, head agency banking said.
Ogbonna added that there are only 307,000 PoS terminals in Nigeria as at July 2019 of which only 167,000 are active. There are less than 7,000 ATMs, about 6,000 branches all over the county. All these channels are grossly inadequate for a country with 99 million adult population. “This is the reason agency banking has become not only important but inevitable in achieving the Federal Government’s financial inclusion strategy,” he said.
He said the challenges of the agents which include charges, settlement and reconciliation issues, restrictive agency banking application and the platform, inadequate PoS terminals and support, delayed commission payment, insufficient branding and promotional items are being addressed with the launching of the new App as well as the multi-channel application.
“The new agency banking solution is a robust application that can now offer all the services you have been waiting for. We are also dedicating exclusive staff for PoS support settlement reconciliation and issue resolution at our contact centre,” explained.
In addition to these, he said the bank was rolling out branding and promotional items to the first 10,000 agents and subsequently would introduce more.
“We are also procuring additional 5,000 android enabled PoS terminals for our agents. We have also reviewed our commissions upwards,” he added.
HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE
