Consistent with FirstBank’s thought leadership philosophy and commitment to drive financial inclusion in the informal sector, the Bank’s Deputy Managing Director – designate, Gbenga Shobo will be delivering a lecture on Financial Inclusion: Unleashing the Potential in the Informal Sector, at the Day 1 plenary session of the “Banks of the Future in Africa” Conference, taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa, on February 17-18, 2016.
“Banks of the Future in Africa” Conference is a retail-oriented summit in its second edition as part of Efma’s Pan African Summit series. The two-day event will convene a panel of speakers – all senior bank executives from over 20 countries, to discuss and share ideas on the best ways of building retail financial services in the African region. The conference will also focus on strategic and practical topics such as retail financial services for individuals, families, micro-enterprises and SMEs. Physical and mobile strategies will be reviewed and the most noteworthy innovations will be analysed in detail.
In a statement by the DMD-designate of FirstBank, Gbenga Shobo, the Bank would continue to support initiatives that will drive financial inclusion more specifically in the informal sector. “As Nigeria’s foremost retail bank and in line with our strategy to drive financial inclusion in the informal sector, FirstBank has created an ecosystem to bank the financially excluded by partnering with government, NGO, and other private sector users to increase usage of our agency banking network and mobile banking offerings to low income earners”, he said.
He further stated that there are sizeable opportunities in the Informal Sector SME’s which have been shut out of the Banking system because Banks can only transact with registered companies. “If these informal sectors SME’s can be brought into the formal sector, there are significant upsides for Banks in Nigeria to grow their loan portfolios”.
Other speakers expected to be in attendance at the conference include Bruce Adrain, Liberty Holdings; Chris Wood, Nedbank Group; Mizinga Melu, Barclays Africa Group; Alexandre Maymat, Société Générale amongst host of other professionals from leading banks.