City Investments Company joins universal bank family now Premium Bank
City Investments Company Limited (CIC), a finance house, has started its operations as a universal bank with a commitment to open eight additional branches by the end of next year. It has, thus, become the 33rd bank in the country.
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Known as Premium Bank, it received its approval from the Bank of Ghana (BoG) in the second quarter of 2016 and as part of its transition, intends to expand its branch network to serve more Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
At a session to brief the media on the institution’s transition into a bank, the Deputy Managing Director of the bank, Ms Jacqueline Benyah, said the locations chosen were what she described as SME hotspots and the rationale was to get closer to the SMEs to enable the bank to serve them better.
“In the next one year, we will be having about eight more branches in Accra, Kumasi and Tarkwa. These locations are SME hotspots and we deliberately chose those locations so we can better serve the SME market,” she noted.
Focus on SME
Ms Benyah said the bank would continue to focus on SMEs, who have formed the core of its operations for the past 20 years, explaining that for some banks, SME business was a sub-unit but, “For us at CIC, that was our core business and that gave us the opportunity to understand their business better and come up with products to suit them.”
She reiterated that the bank would continue to work with the SMEs to assist them to improve their businesses.
“You cannot assist them from a distance; you have to be actively involved in their business. If you don’t take an active part in what they are doing, then it becomes a challenge. It is not that they don’t know what they are doing; they understand their business more than anybody else. We know them and we will continue to serve them better,” she said.
She added, “We have existed for 20 years and we are only extending to them the services that they need.”
The banking journey
She said the journey to becoming a bank was largely influenced by the need to extend products and services that its finance house status did not allow under the BoG regulations.
“It was more about our customers and not us. There were some products that we were by law not allowed to offer, so if we assisted them, we could only do that part of the way. As time went on, the need to consider the possibility of adding these products came up. We brought it to the attention of the board and it took us five years to get here,” she said.
On the issue of mergers, Ms Benyah explained that although she would not speak for the shareholders, all options were up for consideration.