‘ Diaspora investment critical to bridge FX supply gap, grow economy’
Jane Kimemia has over two decades of banking experience handling different roles in East Africa, Southern and West Africa. Now the Chief Executive Officer of Optiva Capital Partners Limited, she speaks with GEOFF IYATSE, about the impact of her company's initiative that targets attracting $ 5 billion yearly into Nigeria through diaspora investment.
Your firm launched a bouquet of wealth advisory services to close last year. Could you shed light on the social relevance of the schemes?
I
N December, we launched our investment services and advisory proposition, which is a culmination of efforts throughout last year, working with our partners to put together a suite of products, services and solutions, in investment services and advisory.
What we have under our investment services is a comprehensive range of products addressing the needs of our clients for investment purposes and the preservation of their wealth across generations, different interests and risk profiles of clients on what is their risk appetite and their expectations in terms of returns.
We have a full range of opportunities and products for them to access the global market. In advisory, clients' needs are different, so we take into consideration what they want on returns and expectations, time horizon and their liquidity. It is a comprehensive range of investment products to address the needs of our clients and return on investments for preservation of their wealth across generations, for access to the financial markets globally and being the bridge to that opportunity they would not have been able to access on their own.
With our asset management partners, they look at the global space. Take, for instance, the Nigerian Stock Exchange ( NSE), there will be several securities listed there. Extrapolate that to the global space, the New York Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the multiplicity of securities and investment options that are listed, how do I as a client navigate the complexity of this space?
When we work with our asset management partners, it is to bridge that gap, that complexity and distill that into investable opportunities for our clients to say this is what you need in terms of return on investment and these are the products we have for you.
You talked about the protect, grow, enhance and optimise wealth philosophy. How does this apply to investment?
The protection agenda in our philosophy is simply to help our clients safeguard the value of their wealth across different seasons. If you look at the currency depreciation and devaluation for example, it is to ensure that a significant proportion of the wealth is in the currency that will safeguard the value over time.
The growth agenda will only happen if you are not putting all your wealth in a basket that is subject to the vagaries of depreciation. Once your wealth is protected, we can then talk of allocating to different asset classes and we have a range of opportunities across different asset classes.
The enhancement agenda is about diversification, which is very important because no matter how strong the basket is, you should not put all your eggs into it. So, it's about diversification across currencies, geographies, and across different asset classes, to take advantage of growth opportunities and if anything happens, they are hedged against concentration risk. Does the wealth advisory services tie into your recent partnership with Polaris Bank?
The objective of this mutually beneficial partnership is to tap into the over seven million customers of Polaris Bank. What they are looking for is a differentiation or solutions that will empower them to provide solutions that their clients need.
With this partnership, we will be offering Polaris bank investment immigration options - a full range of investment immigration solutions that Optiva has because we are market leaders in investment immigration, not only in Nigeria but across Africa.
So, beyond transactional banking and opening accounts in Polaris Bank, what more can you offer me that addresses my needs for investment, immigration and global access? Our partnership empowers them to provide a customer- value proposition that is comprehensive and addresses the needs of their customers across different segments. For us at Optiva it is a platform for us to serve and distribute our products to continue to offer solutions.
Our first, second and third goals are service, which ultimately defines whatever direction we choose to go because we have come to associate service with a winning edge. This is because the better the quality of your service delivery, the greater your upsurge in terms of growth. We have been able to initiate and execute end- to- end service delivery for our clients and we can achieve that by taking ownership of every relationship.
Also, in line with our philosophy to protect, grow, enhance, and optimise wealth for discerning investors, we have introduced a new product called Diaspora Investor Direct Investment ( DIDI), which is our unique product to attract diaspora funds and investments into the country. The objective is to stand in the gap for Nigerians in the diaspora who seek to remit funds home for investment purposes, because most of them are afraid of losing their funds to unscrupulous persons or agents, so we bridge that gap.
Nigeria diaspora funds are ranked among the top five globally, estimated at $ 100 billion per annum, and our target is to use the Optiva Capital structure, infrastructure, and wealth management skills to get five per cent channelled into productive investments that will yield good returns at home for Nigerians in the diaspora.
On the modalities for implementation, first, we get Nigerians who seek to build homes to send their money so that we help them bridge the gap between trust and dishonest third parties. We help the diasporans to create an enabling environment that will ensure that they track the progress of their sundry investments. With DIDI, we shall help investors manage the risks associated with repatriation of funds back to the country for sundry investments ranging from property development and farms to cottage factories. We have already created structures that will help Nigerians in the diaspora to manage businesses back home end to end, including setting up farms, and for each project or investment that every diasporan wishes to make, Optiva Capital Partners shall help in the land acquisition, proper registration of titles, and eventual setting up of the business.
Optiva Capital offers an opportunity for the safety of funds and investments, and as such the Diaspora Investor Direct Investment is intended to bring into the country about $ 5 billion in investments.
You dedicate much of your time to speaking about women of purpose. Is the pursuit of women empowerment deliberate for you in your investment advisory drive?
Some years ago, I read a book titled ' Half Time' by Bob Buford. Earlier in my career I worked for two international banks across different capacities for a combined 20 years, and Half Time talks about moving from success to significance and I think a lot of professionals identify with that.
The ' Half Time' story happens to different people at different times, you know you have been successful in one space but you seek significance, which is about impact and really about purpose. Sometimes people find that they are aligned to their purposes. Though I am still in the financial services industry, it's a larger platform to serve and continue to be aligned as well as to use my personality to make an impact for service.
In terms of mentorship, Optiva mentors more women to be successful. At Optiva, over 70 per cent of our workforce is women. For us, it is not just a one- off thing to celebrate the upcoming International Day for Women, because we are daily committed to empowering our workforce, 70 per cent of whom are women, creating opportunities for them to serve, get better and grow a career.
When you raise one woman, you raise a generation, because one woman impacts at least five people. You can then imagine the multiplier effect of that in a workforce of over 1,000 people of which 70 per cent are women.
We also have a community service programme and I would like to mention our initiative with the Lagos State government in maternal health. It is to address maternal health care and reduce the maternal mortality rate in Nigeria because different World Health Organisation ( WHO) reports state that Nigeria contributes up to 10 per cent of the global maternal death.
Optiva Capital Partners is playing a pivotal role with the Lagos State government as we have identified primary health care in the Ketu area, which we are rehabilitating and focusing on maternal health care. The rehabilitation is the facilities, structures, equipment, and total upgrade of the healthcare facility, and also the referral hospital. It is about the entire chain to ensure that women from that area are taken care of.
There is also an initiative for women in the markets. Women are at the very end of the pyramid, so it's about empowering them in terms of how they get better at their trade and how they get investments. In partnership with a Micro Finance Bank, we are helping them to formalise and structure their businesses so that they can get financing and scale up their businesses.