The new management of the Merchant Bank has announced a new vision to help elevate the bank from its present loss making position to become profitable in the next couple of years.
By this vision, the management is to position the bank to become what it termed “the African trailblazer in banking.” It promises to ensure adequate returns for all its stakeholders including shareholders, clients, regulators and staff.
The Managing Director of the bank, Ms Nilla Selormey, said this at a special cocktail party; the first in many years, held to officially introduce the majority shareholders and board members of the bank to staff and management.
“Vision and mission statements run a very high risk of remaining just words. In our case, however, we will breathe life into these statements by pursuing a strategy that enables us to achieve them,” she said.
Ms Selormey said the strategy of the bank had been prepared by the executives, adding “We have however gone one step over what is typical by requesting that this strategy be validated by external consultants.”
“I did some research on banks that are seen as trailblazers and successful firms and my conclusion from that forms the basis of our strategy to become a trailblazer,” she said.
“Trailblazers in banking in West Africa are mainly from Nigeria, where we have Ecobank, GT Bank, Zenith Bank and Access Bank; trailblazers globally are YES Bank in India, your HSBC Bank, your Deutsche Bank and your Citibank among others,” adding “My finding was that the one thing these banks have in common is solid performance and profits which are driven by a well-defined vision and a clear understanding of where the focus should be in working towards the attainment of this vision.”
Without exception, Ms Selormey noted that the successful banks had a keen focus on their people, their products and their services and processes in recognising the critical role they played and the contribution they made towards achieving their vision.
Bank challenges
The bank has since the change of ownership gone through some turbulent times with court actions among others.
Ms Selormey also outlined a few more challenges the bank was encountering, saying “Our problems, I believe, have been as a result of issues with solvency, liquidity and profitability.”
According to her, “These, in my view, have arisen out of risks that we have fallen victim to: credit risk, liquidity risk, capital management risk and to some extent legal risk. These, together led to us falling victim to the greatest one of all; reputational risk, and you are best placed to testify to the impact this has had on us.”
Changes
“There will be some changes and we need to brace ourselves and embrace this as these changes with not only emanate from the lessons of the past, but are just as important to enable us elevate our game to match up to global best practice.
She said, “Change will also come by way of a relocation of our head office, and possibly repositioning some of our branches.”
The managing director said, “As we look to expand our retail business even further, besides assessing the locations of our existing branches, we will open a number of strategically located new branches and increase our reach by expanding our ATM numbers.”
“We will also complete the process to enable us issue visa enabled ATM debit cards, and these are just a few of the initiatives planned for the year and for which we've started work in earnest,” she said.
Staff of the bank, who took turns to share their views about the bank, pledged their commitment to ensure that the bank regained its position as one of the leaders in the highly competitive industry.