The Nation Newspaper

Tag: bank

  • Unity Bank to give out two cars

    Two customers of Unity bank are to win two brand new cars as reward for participating in the bank’s Save & Win promo. The winners will emerge from the second national draw of the savings promo holding on Saturday, in Lagos.

    A statement from the bank said the event scheduled to take place at Planet One Entertainment centre, Maryland, Lagos, will be witnessed by journalists, customers of the bank, officials of the National Lottery Commission, Consumer Protection Council of Nigeria (CPC) and other members of the public.

    The first national draw was held at the Yar dua Centre in Abuja in July at which a customer of the bank in Maiduguri, Borno State won the star prize of Hyundai Verna car. The customer has since taken possession of the car.

    According to the Media and External Communications Manager of the bank, Sani Mohammed Zaria, consolation prizes of fridges and generators will also be given to other qualifying participants at the draw. He disclosed that 3,750 savers qualified for the national draw from all the operational areas of the bank nationwide.

    He also intimated that Unity bank has three more cars and other consolation prizes to give out in the course of the savings promo scheduled to end later in the month.

    The three cars will be given out to winning customers at the grand finale of the six month long promotion popularly known as Aim, Save and Win.

    The bank has also held zonal draws in the five zones of the bank namely, Lagos & West, Central, North West, North East and South-South in its bid to bring the reward programme down to the grassroots. Many customers won motorcycles, fridges, LCD television sets, phones and bicycles among others.

  • Bank recovery fails to reach real economy

    • Lenders worried about loan defaults after 2009 crisis
    The recovery of Nigeria’s banking sector has failed to get credit flowing to the real economy, as high interest rates and a liquidity squeeze funnel money away from businesses or consumers into high yielding government debt, market players have said.
    According to Reuter’s news, years after a credit crisis led to the near collapse of nine lenders, banking capital ratios have recovered, but lenders are piling all their cash into treasury bills at yields that are unlikely to be sustainable, banking analysts, stated.
    Yields have already fallen in the past month, as JP Morgan prepares to include Nigeria’s debt in one of its indices.
    “Eventually banks are going to have to take real economy risks to drive up returns. I can’t imagine that regulators will continue to licence the operation of banks without there being evidence of some lending to the real sector,” said Razia Khan, Head of Africa Research at Standard Chartered Bank.
    Nigeria’s economy grew 6.17 per cent in the first quarter of this year, according to the latest available figures, but credit to the private sector grew just 4.3 per cent by July 2012, while lending to the government shot up 56.5 per cent in that time.
    Interest income now accounts for 50-70 per cent of gross earnings for Nigerian banks, Francis Ikenga, Head of Strategy at Fidelity Bank told Reuters, but it is mostly in government debt.
    “Interest rates and lending criteria are too difficult to meet,” Lagos Household Product saleswoman Titi Adeojo, has said. “We do a lot of deposits,but it’s not easy to get a loan”.
    In 2008, credit to the private sector outstripped government borrowing for the first time, a move which many analysts had thought heralded a consumer driven boom.
    But 6.3 per cent of total loans of N7.4 trillion ($47 bln) granted in 2008 turned bad, Renaissance Capital said, leaving nine overleveraged banks in need of a bailout.
    Banks are reluctant to risk burning their fingers again.
    “Our lending pattern has changed as it is more skewed towards major corporate bodies. Our approval processes, is now more stringent,” said Kayode Fadahunsi, Investor Relations Director at United Bank for Africa.
    Banks worry consumers and firms may not be able to pay back loans at high interest rates, whereas tax free government bond returns are a safe bet at such attractive rates of 15-16 per cent — a huge spread over average bank deposit rates of 1-2 percent.
    “Access to credit is a bit more difficult for the businesses and households,” said Femi Aribaloye, head of risk management at Skye Bank. He said lending rates for big firms like Flour Mills have risen to 14 percent this year, from 12 percent in 2008. For consumers, by contrast, they went up to 33 percent this year, from 22 percent last year.
    “The crisis in the industry seems to be over,” he said. “But investments are largely being channeled to safer outlets.”
    Yet if treasury yields continue to fall, banks over-reliance on them for earnings could hurt profitability down the line.

     

  • Skye Bank Wins Best card Innovation Award

    Skye Bank Plc at the weekend won the “best card innovation Bank” award in the nation’s financial services industry at the 2012 ‘Nigeria Telecomms Awards’.
    In a statement, the lender said the award confirmed its leading role in electronic payments business.

    The awards organisers, Nigeria Telecomms Awards Group, said the bank won the award because of the overwhelming industry consensus and independent research of its various assessment teams, which acknowledged the bank’s creativity in payments cards.

    Specifically, the awards organisers said the bank won the award because of its creative ingenuity in the creation of the first Pound Sterling denomination Mastercard and for being the first bank to issue a Mastercard Verve card.

    In addition, the group said Skye Bank was the first to issue a Visa co-branded card for online transactions, which it described as a commendable premise on which the card business has built further creativity.

    Skye Bank had received popular endorsement in this regard as over 70 per cent of the respondents recommended the bank for the award over and above the other banks nominated for the award.

    Skye Bank had recently won the “best card issuing efficiency award” at the ACI Payments Worldwide’s ‘African Payments Awards’ held in Lagos where banks and other providers of cards and electronic payments systems converged.

    ACI Worldwide , a worldwide leader in payments system solutions to banks, processors and retailers around the world, has a reputation built on the success of its products that have consistently provided stability, scalability and reliability.

     Also recently, the bank won Intermarc’s best ‘card activation award’ at the recent Card Expo organised by Intermarc Nigeria Limited in Lagos where operators in electronic payments and card business were recognised and honoured.