Access Bank Plc Group Managing Director, Herbert Wigwe told investors in a conference recently that the bank seeks to take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and expand to Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Namibia, and Senegal.

He said; “To expand to high-potential markets and leveraging the benefits of AfCFTA, we will use our London-based office as an anchor for growth to expand representative offices in countries such as India, Lebanon and China.”

“We plan to eventually expand into 22 other African countries to cushion challenges in some markets, diversify earnings and take advantage of growth opportunities in the continent.”

“We believe that we are best positioned to basically do all of that. Our focus is to become an aggregator in Africa and we are building a global payment gateway and providing trade finance support and correspondent banking across the continent. We are focusing on the key markets.”

“We are diversifying our earnings away from volatile markets as well and we are orchestrating our operations from the global payments gateway and ensuring that using Access Bank UK, providing corresponding services from digital platforms, the overall profitability of our franchise.”

“We plan to open four subsidiaries cut across insurance brokerage, consumer lending and agency banking as well as payment business to boost revenue.”