• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Adesola Adeduntan: Bridging Nigeria’s financial inclusion gap

Adesola Adeduntan-pix

An exceptional business executive, banker and exemplary leader, Adesola Adeduntan has grown progressively in his career, breaking every barrier to become the current managing director/chief executive officer of First Bank of Nigeria Limited and Subsidiaries (comprising FBN UK, FBN Congo DR, FBN Ghana, FBN Senegal, FBN Guinea, FBN Gambia, FBN Sierra Leone, FBN Mortgages, and First Pension Custodian).

Prior to this appointment, he was an executive director and the Bank’s chief financial officer. Before coming to First Bank, Sola, as he is fondly called was a Director and the pioneer chief financial officer/business manager of Africa Finance Corporation.

He has served as a senior vice-president & chief financial officer at Citibank Nigeria Limited, a senior manager in the Financial Services Group of KPMG Professional Services and a manager at Arthur Andersen Nigeria.

Over the course of his sterling career, he has garnered diverse expertise in treasury and financial management, risk management, accounting and internal controls, corporate governance, corporate strategy development and implementation, corporate finance, business performance management, financial advisory, investors, regulators and rating agencies relationship management, deployment and management of information technology, and compliance.

Sola attended the University of Ibadan, where he obtained a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Cranfield University Business School, United Kingdom, which he attended as a “British Chevening Scholar.” In addition to his MBA, he has attended executive/leadership programmes at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and INSEAD.

Since becoming the MD of First Bank, Sola’s drive for nation-building, poverty reduction as well as economic growth and development led to the rolling out of the Group’s digital banking strategy, which aims to leverage new and evolving technologies to facilitate access to everyday financial services for consumers and businesses alike.

One of the things that make FirstBank stand out from its peers is the fact that under the umbrella of Sola, the lender has successfully put financial inclusion as a core part of its business strategy and it is thus, exploiting the opportunity to create significant social impact in a profitable manner.

With over 125 years of existence, First Bank under the leadership of Sola is focusing on deepening financial inclusion like never before especially through it’s over 31,000 agents spread across the nooks and crannies of the country.

The bank under Sola’s watch is channelling resources to ensure it contributes its quota in providing easy and affordable financial services to Nigerians in line with the aim of the Federal Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

In 2018, Sola was named the African Banker of the Year in the African Leadership Magazine Persons of the Year Award which took place in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was also inducted into the African Leadership CEOs Hall of Fame at the event.

His emergence as the African Banker of the Year was noted to have been in recognition of his commitment to the ethics of the banking profession, strict compliance to the CBN’s reforms in the Nigerian banking industry and the economic development of the nation, coupled with his exemplary leadership in and out of the boardroom.

Also, Global Banking and Finance Review recently awarded First Bank of Nigeria Limited, a pioneer in retail banking development in Nigeria with recognition for its dedication to providing leadership and excellence in the banking sector.

“The bank’s commitment to retail banking is reflected in their strategic vision, organizational structure and strong risk management which contributed to their outstanding performance,” said Wanda Rich, editor, Global Banking & Finance Review “We look forward to seeing more from them for years to come.”

Moody’s Investors Service, an American credit rating agency, recently applauded FBN Holdings (FBNH), the parent company of First Bank for driving down its Non-performing Loan (NPL) ratio to 14.5 percent.

“The decline is credit positive because it shows the bank is making progress cleaning up its balance sheet, which will support its solvency,” Moody’s said in its financial institution report on July 30th 2019.

According to the second quarter report of FBN Holdings, its NPL ratio, mainly from First Bank, declined to by 10.8 percentage points from 25.3 percent in the first quarter 2019 to 14.5 percent, which is also 11.4 percentage points lower than the 25.9 percent at reported in 2018.

Although still high, FBNH’s problem loans has dropped by 49percent since the end of 2018 to about N273 billion after the bank wrote off N127 billion worth of loans that were fully provisioned coupled with some NPLs that were recovered.

FBN Holdings is targeting an NPL ratio of lower than 10percent by the end of 2019. At the end of the first half of 2019, FirstBank Holdings posted a profit before tax of N39.9 billion. This is an increase of 2.6 percent over N38.9 billion made a year ago.

In the six month period ended June 30, 2019, gross earnings of FBHN stood at N294.2 billion, up 0.3 percent year-on-year from N293.3 billion in the corresponding period of 2018.

Net-interest income slowed by two percent to N146.7 billion year-on-year, however, FBHN was able to improve its non-interest income by 3.6 percent from last year. The lender recorded N63.6 billion non-interest income, up from N61.3 billion in H1 2018.

Net interest margin, a measure of the difference between interest income banks make and the interest paid on depositor funds, rose to 7.7 percent in H1 2019, as against 7.1 percent in the same period last year.

In H1 2019, FBHN noted an impairment charge for credit losses of N22.1 billion, down 58.1 percent YoY from N52.8 billion.

Post-tax return on average equity, a gauge of how well shareholders fund is utilised in creating net income, improved to 11.6 percent compared to 10 percent in H1 2018. However, post-tax return on average assets declined to 1.1 percent.

Liquidity ratio for H1 2019 was 40.3 percent for First Bank (Nigeria), down from 45.2 percent in December 2018, while its Capital Adequacy Ratio stood at 15.6 percent.

For FBNQuest Merchant Bank, the unified brand name for the Merchant Banking and Asset Management businesses of FBN Holdings, CAR improved to 13.4 percent from 12.2 percent in December 2018.

In the period under review, total assets of the bank rose 1.8 percent to N5.7 trillion, from N5.6 trillion in December. Customers’ deposits increased by 2.8 percent to N3.6 trillion. Customer loans and advances (net) also rose 3.5 percent to N1.74 trillion from N1.68 trillion in December last year.

Under the leadership of Sola, First Bank plans to drive its retail banking and deepen financial inclusion through the use of credit as an incentive to bring the excluded into the financial net.

First Bank was awarded the Best Retail Bank Nigeria 2019 because of the company’s outstanding performance and achievements in retail banking and by scoring well in the following categories.

Sola is evidence that hard work and consistency pays regardless of background, age or religion.

 

ENDURANCE OKAFOR