With income levels at a low and food inflation biting away at Nigerians’ meagre resources, savings becomes the last thing on the mind of the average bank customer.
Total bank deposits has struggled to hit its 2014 levels when it reached $104 billion.
Although the numbers have risen from 2017 after it dropped to $81 billion in 2016, it is still bogged down by economic headwinds and anti-consumer policies
Worried by the declining savings habit, United Bank for Africa (UBA) in 2018 moved beyond hiring human marketers to do street to street and simply incentivised its customers to save. That decision led to the birth of the Wise Savers Promo, UBA’s marketing communication strategy for one year.
The Wise Savers campaign essentially requires customers to save at least N30,000 in N10,000 batches for a minimum of three months in order to qualify for the quarterly draw. Every quarter 20 winners are selected through a computer-based raffle draw. Each of the 20 winners are rewarded with N1.5 million.
Over the course of one year, 2 million customers jostled for who will save the most. 80 millionaires were made within the period representing N120 million. In return, UBA generated N150 billion in customer deposits plus about one million new customers that joined the bank. Given the time frame, it was an unprecedented milestone for the bank.
“More than that we got the patronage of our loyal customers and we are happy that the savings culture is growing in the country,” Anant Rao, UBA’s Group Head, Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) and Telemarketing said. “It is very important that everybody should understand the importance of savings and then save for a rainy day and you can also get some returns from that.”
The impact in terms of the customers is that it gave them the ability to develop the habit of saving on a regular basis so that they can meet their financial goals and eat whenever they want to.
