Financial giant, Access Bank plans to dominate agency banking by significantly increasing its customer base and deepening wallet share of the banking population.
Access Bank’s agency banking-‘Access Closa’ recently hit a milestone of having 100,000 agents spread across Nigeria. The bank further plans to increase its footprint by having a minimum of 50 agents in each of the 774 local government areas of the country.
Group Head, Agency Banking, Access Bank Plc, Chizoba Iheme, in a chat with journalists noted that due to the limited number of financial institutions, especially in rural areas, ‘Access Closa’ is Access Bank’s strongest retail channel used in providing banking services to a large population of unserved and underserved Nigerians.
According to her, the plan is to bank one in two Nigerians and this will see the bank increasing its customer base and deepening wallet share of the banking population.
“Going by the high youth and adult population, the resources of Nigeria’s financial institutions are being overstretched in providing physical and human resources and were unable to cope with gaps that existed in meeting banking needs of Nigerians hence the need for agency banking as envisaged by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2013.
“Therefore, agency banking helps financial institutions decongest crowded branches by providing a matching and more often convenient channel for their customers. In instances where reaching customers in rural areas is often highly expensive for financial institutions because transaction numbers and volumes do not cover the cost of a branch, agency banking helps in serving them,” Iheme said.
She added that becoming an agent has become a means to empower and reduce unemployment in Nigeria.
“Our commission structure allows an agent to earn up to N500,000 and more monthly in commission including incentives and opportunities for agents to grow their business and partner with a reputable brand is an attraction to the Closa brand,” Iheme said.
Furthermore, on risks associated with agency banking in the country and how Access Banks moves to mitigate it, Iheme outlined four major risks including technological, legal, fraud and reputational and assets risks.
“Technological risk, to prevent software and hardware failures, the bank is investing in new infrastructure with capacity to absorb service disruptions that will have minimal impact. As part of our onboarding process, the bank’s agents are required to execute a service agreement that stipulate the roles and responsibilities of each party.
“Also, agents are trained at the point of activation on Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Terrorism Financing. This training also takes place every year to reiterate the dangers and consequences associated with fraudulent actions. Besides, the bank has set maximum daily limit on the amount and frequency of transactions that can be performed by an agent. Lastly, a quarterly risk profiling exercise is carried out on all agents for effective management,” Iheme added.
She noted that Access Bank is the leading retail bank in Nigeria with over 600 branches and more than 40 million customers, adding that the bank offers products and services tailored to suit the lifestyle of every Nigerian irrespective of age and demographic.
Credit: thenationonlineng.net
