What was your forage into the banking industry like, did you choose it or did it choose you?

I chose banking with my eyes wide open.

Initially,(Laughs) medicine was my ambition and that was the wish of my parents too. But along the way, things took a twist and I ended up studying Agric Economics. I did a bit of research and tried to find out what I could do with the degree I was studying. Coincidentally, at the time, I had some influencers who were bankers and had studied a similar course. As a young boy, I liked what was happening to them; in terms of how progressive they were in life and how passionate they were about banking. And so, realizing I could use my degree to become a banker, I went for it. I did my youth service in a bank 25 years ago and since then, I have never looked back.

Did you at any point in time think you would get to the position of CEO?

Of course, I am positively ambitious. I cannot want to be a soldier and not aspire to be a Field Marshal. When I joined banking, I had a vision to get to the peak of my career, so I was focused and worked towards it. Everything I did was driven by this aspiration. Let’s also not forget the God factor, because you can have all these ambitions and if it’s not God’s will that you would get to the top, you will not get there.

So what was the journey like?

Yes, I would say that I have had a smooth journey but true to life, if you haven’t had bumps along the way, then probably something is wrong. The banking business can be quite risky. There are days you go to work, and you don’t go back home because something unrelated to what you do has just happened that impacts you. You could end up in a police station for something someone else did. It has been smooth and tough at the same time, but I guess I have been lucky enough to weather the storm up till this time.

A recent study by an online platform rated Fidelity Bank as the best bank to work in Nigeria, how does that make you feel?

Of course, it makes me feel good. One of the biggest challenges of any leader is people’s happiness. You need happy and loyal people to be committed to the institution. Maybe I should give you a bit of background on how some of these ranking are done. The companies involved independently engaged the staff to rate the organization they work for, using various standard criteria. There’s no way you can have control over what 6,300 staff would say. It is from the feedback that they draw up the ranking. True, you cannot satisfy everyone, but if majority of our staff feel comfortable enough to vote our bank as the best place to work, then it means that we are getting something right. And as the person who currently leads the institution, it makes me feel really good.

In view of the prevailing economic climate characterized by massive slump in oil prices, weak naira and stringent regulations by the Central Bank, what is the rationale behind the bank’s recent rebranding exercise?

I will give a bit of history here. Fidelity Bank is 27years old. It started as a merchant bank and transformed over the years to a full blown commercial bank with international banking license. Fidelity has a history of rich heritage and although a conservative bank, it is well capitalized and well managed. By the grace of God, I am the third CEO of the bank in its 27years of existence. The first CEO did 15years, the second did 10years and I have been there for two years. This speaks to stable management.

Now, suddenly you find that times are changing, the youth population in the country is growing by the day and so you must evolve to appeal the emerging segments in the market as what appealed to customers and other stakeholders in the past is not the same thing that appeals to them today. There’s not a lot you can do if your brand is still perceived as conservative. Moving forward, we definitely are not jettisoning our rich heritage, which is why when you look at our new logo, you will see that there is a combination of the past, present and future. The blue colour represents our rich heritage, the green represents our growth and trajectory and then the arrow tips which has one pointing backwards to our past and one pointing forward, this signifies where we are going as bank. If you also look at the centre of the logo, there’s a white line that is trending upwards. What that is simply saying is that we are combining the rich heritage of our past and the innovation and growth trajectory of our future to give you a bank that can only move you forward. That speaks to the reason we are rebranding. Moreover, I will also like to emphasize that rebranding is not just about changing your logo or any icon that represent you. When I became CEO nearly two years ago, I did promise the board that we would rebrand the bank. For me, it was not only about these external manifestations, which we have just done, I was committed to rebranding the bank internally, even before we got to the external. We needed to upgrade our IT systems to be in tune with what’s happening today, and to put in place a robust performance management system. We have also upgraded our tools, our resources and capabilities to prepare for the future. So when you hear our staff voting us as the best place to work, it is because of some of the things that we have done. When the leadership started under my watch, we came up with a mantra that said “Back to the basics, Forward to the future”. Back to the basics speaks to the fact that banking at the end of the day is financial intermediation. You take money from those that have deposits and lend it to the needy sector of the economy. Forwarding to the future speaks to moving rapidly with globalization and advances in technology. This mantra basically encapsulates all that we are trying to do and that’s what is manifesting today in the branding process.

So in the spirit of continuity, what are some of the post rebranding strategies being done to continually strengthen and develop the bank in the years ahead?  

Already, we have upgraded our e-banking channels; and we are currently implementing an upgrade of our core banking software. It’s not just enough to do the rebranding, it has to cut across all sectors. A customer who walks into Fidelity in Lagos should have same experience if he walks into Fidelity in Sokoto. The only way you can achieve this in a fast growing commercial bank like ours is to make sure that you retune your resources and capabilities. Last year, we added 471,000 retail customers to our books, and also 30% of our loan growth came from retail customers. What this means is that we increasingly are building up low cost deposits while making sure that we either reprise or return expensive priced deposits. Post rebranding, we will continue this trajectory to serve a larger base. For instance, in the areas of SME’s we are well known for all the activities and leadership positions that Fidelity has assumed. We will continue to drive these markets post rebranding, so that when we speak about our new direction, it connects with the brand that we have just unveiled.

What in your opinion, should the common man consider when choosing a bank?

If you want to send money to Makurdi, I want you to be able to pick up your phone, log into your online system and transfer the money hitch free. To the layman that might seem like magic but that’s why we are working backstage to put system and process in place. If I go to an ATM, I want to have access to my funds at all times without any excuse from my bank. For Fidelity, realizing this is one of the reasons why we are upgrading our systems. That’s why we have retuned our e-banking channels in a manner that those who banked with us about a year ago will have a totally different experience on our only platform now.

What are your bank’s plans for the longer term?

Medium to long term, we aspire to become a tier one bank. If you recall, last year, we made a bid for two of the AMCON banks being sold, but we didn’t win any of those bids. That would have helped fast track our aspirations to getting to tier 1. In the last 27years, Fidelity Bank has gone through challenges and emerged stronger. Our long-term aspiration is to continue the culture of building a stable institution. Today, we might not be the most profitably bank, but we will continue to build an institution that is here for the long term and would outlive all of us. We expect that in the next three or five years, we should be able to get into tier 1. Don’t forget that the bar keeps raising everyday but we have enough resilience to weather the storm.

In what ways would you say the face of banking has changed since over 23years ago when you first joined the industry?

Sometimes I ask myself how we were able to do banking in those days. Let me give you a simple example. If you worked in the 80s or 90s as a credit analyst, you would have actually experienced working with a spreadsheet. It was a paper that had formulas that you had to calculate yourself. While working, if you picked the financial statement of a company, you had to manually pick the turnover, the cost of goods sold, the sales and general administrative expenses then you begin to calculate your ratios manually. You could actually spend two days just spreading the financial numbers. Those who started banking about ten years ago won’t even understand what I am talking about. Today, all you do is call up the template and if you plug in certain numbers like maybe your balance sheet items, your P and L items, it does your cash flows, your ratio analysis and all of that. Today, banking has become more advanced and much more technology enabled. Above all, the customer has also become more sophisticated and more discerning. There were times when banks did not go marketing. They expected you to come to them. Those were the days of tally numbers.

The customer experience has changed significantly and the demands are even more now. The best way to address the challenges in the banking industry is to find out how the customer likes to be served. No amount of advertising would pull customers to you, if the customer’s experience is not s pleasant one.

Do you think that the challenge of poor ethics and professionalism are still prevalent in the banking industry? How can the industry address these challenges?

Just like in any other industry; poor ethics and unprofessional conduct still exist, but I don’t know about the prevalence. The question is what is being done about it? Today, the Central Bank is very stringent on unprofessional conduct or ethic misbehavior. The code is very clear. There are certain things that if you do in a bank you are not only dismissed but the bank is also obligated to send your details to Central Bank to stop you from ever getting employed in any other bank. The bankers committee also has the ethics committee, which handles questionable issues. The public increasingly becoming aware of the fact that if you notice any misconduct you can actually report the banker to the relevant authorities especially the regulator. This is why the consumer protection department of central bank is a very vital unit. Like I said, I don’t know about prevalence, instead what I think is happening today is that both regulators and players understand that if you do not protect the industry, your display of unprofessional conduct and unethical behaviour could ruin us. So, it is a joint fight to make sure that we maintain sanity in the industry.

What leadership style do you bring to bear on the business? And how does this style resonate bank wide?

I would like to say that I prefer and try to practice what is called authentic leadership. Authentic leaders have to do with mission and goal driven leadership above self. For instance, it doesn’t matter what I would rather have but if we have a job to do as a bank and we have had strategy sessions, the board sets the policies and agenda for management. If we have to drive this, the focus is delivery.

To put it in better perspective, Prof. Bill George described authentic leadership as a leadership style where people enact leadership based on their own previous experience. For instance growing up in this career, I have worked with a lot of supervisors. I know those I would rather not be like because I didn’t like the way they treated the organization or me. You have to learn from one’s life experience and then make sure that when you are in a leadership position, you play down the negatives and emphasize the positives and above all show candor. There must be unity with what you say and what you practice. That is the only way.

What would you say has been your greatest achievement so far as CEO?

Let’s forget the financial numbers; the institution would still be here even when we have retired. I think my greatest achievement is putting in place a system where today, I daresay that nobody in Fidelity bank would tell you that his or her appraisal took him or her by surprise. We deployed a robust performance management system and so you can actually track your own performance on daily or monthly basis. That way, you have your eyes fixed on the target.

As the end of the day, no matter what I achieve in the bank, if I don’t have the people issues right, then I have failed. If we have a system that accurately and fairly measures people performance, then that’s a big achievement. And you know why? This is the only way the numbers will continue to increate. I would rather do this, than to say my biggest achievement is in x or y profit.

Your career path definitely takes you away from home a lot. How do you strike a balance between time for work and time for your family?

In a few months, I would have been married for twenty years. I met my wife as a middle service officer in a bank and her understanding and cooperation concerning my job has made it easier for me to cope. Indeed she sacrificed her career to make sure that the home front was well taken care of. So, despite my busy schedule my number 1 priority is my family. My most respected critic is my wife, she tells me as it is.

I have a balanced home and as much as possible, I try to spend as much time as I can with my family. For instance on weekends when I don’t have meetings, I devote it totally to them, at the end of the day if you have a successful career and you don’t have your family intact then you have nothing. I try my best to balance it and my wife and I have done a fairly good job of it.

How would you like to be remembered after you leave the banking industry?

I would like to be remembered as this person who initially didn’t think he would come to banking, but did and not only got to the peak of the career, but above all, was able to impact lives and also groom other people who ended up travelling same road and achieving even more than I have. I would be happy if when I am retired, someone meets my son Joshua and says; “Your dad mentored me in banking and I made a success of it”.

I would like to be remembered as a CEO that didn’t disappoint his predecessors but instead took the bank to a greater height than where they left it and also set the stage for whoever is taking over from me to do better.

Any word of advice for entry-level bankers?

In recent times you suddenly found bankers who thought that banking was all about getting deposits. That’s not it, if you build good customer relationship, create values and help customers resolve their needs you will build a stable balance sheet and the desirable kind of deposits would naturally come your way. If you really want to enjoy banking and make a career out of it, you have to be prepared for hard work. There are no shortcuts.

– Courtesy: THISDAY Style