Bearing in mind the imperative of strategic partnership in ensuring long-term sustainability in the banking industry, First Bank of Nigeria Plc, the country’s premier and leading financial services provider, has inaugurated Vendor Engagement Session. It’s a platform that allows the bank to foster a mutual relationship with strategic partners, as well as offer guidelines on business continuity to them.
Themed ‘Building Resilience In Our Vendors’ Businesses,’ the maiden edition of the session, which held on August 7, 2019 at Four Points by Sheraton, Victoria Island, Lagos, drew participants from across the bank’s executives, industry experts and representatives of the business partners.
In his welcome address at the event, Patrick Iyamabo, the bank’s chief financial officer, noted that the engagement session was necessitated by the changing landscape in the operating environment, which behoves the bank to create awareness and guidelines on how to foster long-term strategic partnership for sustainable business and mutual benefit of the bank and its partners.
The bank, according to Iyamabo, sees the vendors as critical partners, hence the need to work together with them for sustainable growth and shared success.
In her introduction and overview of the session, Damilola Adisa, group head, Procurement, First Bank, noted that the bank has been reinventing itself for 125 years in business through sustained investments and development of businesses alongside the its partners over these years.
She noted that the bank hoped to keep the vendors in business for as long as possible by offering assistance and structures that would enable them to build businesses that would survive many generations.
“We are engaging the vendors on how to improve on their services, in line with transparency, efficiency, value creation among other things they need to grow and sustain their businesses,” Adisa said.
She assured that after the engagement session, the vendors would be enlightened on where First Bank is heading to so as to enable them to align with its cooperate and procurement strategy to move their businesses forward and further foster the mutual relationship with the bank.
However, Duke Abanum, head, Operational Risk and Business Continuity Management, took the session to another level when he enlightened the vendors on the need to reduce their exposure to unnecessary risks.
In his presentation entitled ‘Business Continuity Planning and Management’, Abanum said that while challenges were inevitable in a business cycle, those who are forward-looking and resilient are likely going to survive the challenges and thrive.
While profit is at the core of every business, he noted that a good business plan and thorough execution were necessary to build resilient businesses that would survive generations amid competition.
On anti-bribery, disclosure of related parties, code of conduct and gift policy, the bank expressed its commitment to work with the vendors but in compliance with all regulations so that the regulators will not sanction its actions deemed questionable.
The anti-bribery session enlightened the vendors on the code of conduct for their business partnership with the bank, highlighting issues such as non-disclosure, offering of cash and valuable items, gifts in direct exchange of reciprocal services, non-protection of customers’ data, provision of substandard services or products that may affect customers, use of child-labour among others as punishable offences that could even lead to blacklisting of the vendors.
Also at the engagement session, Adeola Abioye, who represented Michael Anyimah, treasurer, First Bank, exposed the vendors to opportunities to mitigate foreign exchange risks, treasury products to grow revenues, among others.
According to her, the declining trend in global output growth, general market apathy, which portends relatively subdued growth prospects, and policy uncertainties, point to the fact that vendors should plan ahead and be as flexible as possible in order to survive whatever policy was in place.
She urged the vendors to watch the foreign exchange window, take advantage of the supply order financing and the low interest rate of 4 percent short term and 14 percent long term to get credit facilities from the banks as rates are likely to rise later this year.
