Access Holdings targets top 5 ranking in Africa by 2027

Access Holdings Plc is targeting to be one of the top five banks with African heritage on the continent with 100 million retail customers by 2027.

The Group Managing Director, Dr Herbert Wigwe, said this at the launch of the corporation’s new five-year strategic plan 2023 to 2027 late on Wednesday in Lagos.

Wigwe said the institution would be among the top five in terms of revenue, balanced scorecord and asset base.

“Access Holdings will be in the eye of the storm, having transformed to become a leading financial and ecosystem player, with its core business as the foundation. We want to be truly known a global player in the market.

“I have no doubt that we are truly on our way to becoming a global bank with an African heritage.

“We will also make sure that our corresponding banking is made stronger at the end of the five-year plan due to the fact that our subsidiaries, especially the one in UK are growing well.

“This is well structured strong organic growth and to ensure that we expand, we will need the right technology and skill to do so,” he said.

He said the banking group would act as a nexus to drive transformation for the corporation.

Wigwe added that it would drive customer acquisition with digital solutions to migrate 100 million retail customers by 2027.

“370 million Africans do not have access to financial services, up to 60 million in Nigeira,” he said.

According to him, the retail bank aims to evolve into a digital sales and service provider by 2027.

Wigwe said the group would expand its footprints in about 26 countries with at least three countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

He added that it would continue to support trade in France, United Kingdom and United States of America.

Wigwe said the bank had experienced rapid growth from ninth position in 2017 to number one in 2022.

He said the group would focus on trade by leveraging established presence across trade and financial hubs across the world to drive trade outputs.

Wigwe stated that the corporation’s strategy would be driven by seven key enablers such as customer experience, digital technology, data analytics, people and culture.

Others, according to him, are Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG); communication, risk and capital.

He said the group would continue to invest in risk and capital to protect growth.

“We need to invest in risk and capital to protect growth and you cannot grow without managing risk and if you don’t understand how to manage risk you will run into trouble,” he said.

Wigwe added that the strategy would be achieved with two business models namely, Hydrogen and Oxygen to achieved the desired growth and developemnt.

He said that Hydrogen would focus on delivering integrated payments solutions while Oxygen would focus on digital loans to consumers and MSMEs.

Wigwe said by 2027, Access would be a top two pensions player across the market with two acquisitions already completed.

He said pensions would acquire customers from three main avenues by leveraging relationship with existing corporate customers to provide services to their employees, cross-sell pension products to existing banking individual customers and targeted commercial campaigns through both physical and digital channels.

Also speaking, the Managing Director, Access Bank Ltd., Mr Roosevelt Ogbonna, said the bank had consistently outperformed the market on the growth of key metrics since its strategic drive in 2017.

Ogbonna said the bank would improve on its operational efficiency to further drive profit before tax and lower its cost income ratio and ensure enhanced returns to the shareholders.