Jaiz Bank grows investment to N22bn
Jaiz Bank Plc, Nigeria’s first and only full-fledged interest-free bank, said its investment portfolio across sectors of the Nigerian economy will be crossing over N22bn by July as the banks plans further expansion by year-end 2014.
Managing Director of the bank, Muhammad Nurul Islam, made the disclosure when he led officials of the bank on a visit to Media Trust Limited yesterday.
He said the bank’s investments which cut across various sectors of the Nigerian economy were in accordance with Islamic banking system where every single penny invested is for the purpose of mitigating basic human necessities.
Islam said Jaiz Bank’s growth in Nigeria within the last two years is unimaginable and has surpassed that seen in Bangladesh as well as in some Nigerian conventional banks.
The MD said the bank will soon pay dividend to its shareholders. “Today in Nigeria Jaiz Bank, we have not crossed 3 years and our deposits are almost N25bn, we are dreaming to declare dividend after 2015 operation. We are praying so that at least we can give any amount of dividend to our shareholders, once we get the national license by the end of 2014.”
He said the bank will be able to achieve this feat because of a strong backing from “not only the richest man in the entire Africa and the entire Muslim world of Nigeria but because of common shareholder who has some money to invest in the bank.”
The IT infrastructure which the bank has invested in within twoand-a half years is also a major feat for the bank. “Within a month, we will have all sorts of IT infrastructure except Visa and Master cards which will be in place in two to three months time,” he added.
“We have got shareholders’ deposit of N10bn plus and depositors’ deposit of N25bn. Now, we have N35bn in our hands out of which we could invest only N13 billion, N22 billion is in our hands idle,” he said.