Your bank has already been known for her brands and activities, why the rebranding?
At every stage in a company’s life, there has to be that stage of rejuvenation and I think this is the rejuvenation for us. We are moving into another face of Access Bank. The Access Bank of old was before the integration with Intercontinental Bank which was done in Nigeria and Ghana. In our group office it has since been done but because I want a special team later, that is why it is as if we are doing it now. But it’s a bigger bank with a new management, a new focus and a new strategy in place. The last strategy was in 2012 and we have another in 2013 to 2018 so in that strategy also, it requires us to put a lot of things in place, including our new look. We are refurbishing our head office, we are bringing new people in and the bank is also making strides just like we won the award. So in order words we are just stepping up our game.
With kind of economy we have right now in Ghana, how do you intend to deal with that challenge?
In fact, the way the economy is, that is the reason why we need to step up our game. If you don’t change your game and continue doing things in the same old way, you will be left behind and disappear. And what is happening in Ghana now is not peculiar to Ghana alone. It’s across the whole world and that is the reason why it’s required of us to step up the game, look at our strategies very well, rethinks our strategies and repositions ourselves to be able to take care of the kind of challenges we are seeing today. If we don’t reposition ourselves very well, we will be swept away with the tide and we don’t want to be like that.
You are trying to focus on retail banking and SMEs. What are the challenges you are hoping to face and how do you intend dealing with them?
Well, for us it’s a new terrain. But we know, take for example the SMEs that is the hub of business activities in the country – SMEs may be the cause of growth. We are also going in there to see how we can leverage on, to see what challenges we bargain to settle, to see what challenges that come with not having enough deposits in market place, we talking about financial inclusion; the more people save in the bank, the more we have the liquidity to be able to support that sector. So challenges are there and that is what businesses are about. Getting more customers into the bank, expanding financial inclusion to enable as money people who can generate income, to trust the banks to save money in the bank for us to be able to channel these monies to support SME businesses.
You also won an award for the best corporate social responsibility banking and we want to know what are your next strategies to enhance social corporate responsibility for your customers to benefit more from doing business with you?
Our customers will benefit with the quality of services and products we offer them. We won the award in the communities we are working in and so you don’t necessarily have to be our customer to benefit from our corporate social responsibility. We as an organization are also advising our people that we need to give back to our society. One of the things we have done that are different from others is that most of our corporate responsibilities are being done by most of our individual workers to the extent that within the year we had about sixteen hundred people befitting from our programs like sports, education, health, in the arts etc. We also have what we call Employees Volunteer Program and some other things the bank does which we don’t plan for example, a girl with a hole in the heart. We are also sustainability conscious and we take our environment into consideration and so we make sure that our operations don’t harm our environment.
What do you hope to achieve by the close of 2018 going by your business strategy?
Thank you. Our goal by 2018 is that we want to be one of the first three in Ghana. We have been the best since 2010 and we won in 2013 and we hope to maintain that feat. We may not be the number one all the time but we are hoping to be within the best three. We also intend to open ten more branches by next year where we will be adding up to about fifty branches in Ghana. We would have loved to be in the rural areas but banks are into business and we go to where the business is.
By Francis L. Sackitey, Ghana
