STRATEGY:

Our strategic thrust is to be a universal bank, with focus on value opportunities with high growth and margins. We have identified, Transaction banking (including trade services and cash management), Investment banking (including brokerage and asset management) and Consumer banking and as priority areas to accelerate the growth of our business.
Our strategic focus on Transaction, Investment and Consumer banking (TIC) is borne out of the immense profitable growth opportunities that they present. It is also borne out of our ability to offer differentiated TIC solutions to our clients (individuals, SMEs, commercial, corporate, institutions and government entities), in addition to our traditional banking offerings.
Our strategy leverages our strength as a comprehensive financial services group and our distinctive ability to achieve sustainable profitable growth in our chosen areas of focus:

•  Investment Banking: We are currently a top-3 investment bank in Nigeria. We also have established strong corporate relationships with investment led offerings. We additionally have strong local and international distribution channels. We further have some of the best investment bankers in the industry. We are advantaged in terms of available balance sheet to make market
•  Consumer banking: Our strategic partnerships significantly enhance our consumer banking execution capabilities. We have a superior wealth management value proposition through cross sell with CSL, one of the nation’s leading stockbroker and wealth managers. Our robust consumer lending platform and efficient distribution network (over 140 branches, complemented with alternative distribution channels) further propel our advantage
•  Transaction banking: We compete on basis of product innovation, technology platform and have in place a stellar team with outstanding execution track record in transaction banking

We continue to extend our competitive advantage by investing in people and technologies, and transforming our processes as necessary. We are also developing strategic alliances that reinforce our ability to capture high-growth, high-margin opportunities, within and outside Nigeria. We are innovating as necessary to achieve our strategic objectives, and are leveraging cutting edge enterprise-wide risk management systems to manage risks and capture emerging opportunities.

Our strategic goal is to become the undisputed leading investment bank in Nigeria (by revenue share), and a top-quartile bank (revenue share) in both consumer banking and transaction banking by 2012.