Marco Abalroado, Country Managing Director, Access Bank
• Interview
How would you describe the evolution of Access Bank and its establishment in Mozambique?
Access Bank is a 32-year-old bank, and our story is mainly about organic growth plus mergers and acquisitions over the years. The latest one in January 2019 was with Diamond Bank, the biggest retail bank in the country at the time. That merger made Access Bank the biggest retail bank in terms of client numbers. We have around 36 million clients overall and 46 million accounts, mostly in Nigeria but also all across the other countries where we are present, namely Ghana, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Congo, Zambia, and The Gambia. Two years ago, the bank decided to start on an expansion plan for two reasons. The first was to make us a more relevant bank in the countries where we were already present. The goal was to be in the top five biggest banks in those countries. The other aim was to enter new markets and expand our footprint in Africa, and the first new market we selected was Mozambique for two main reasons. One was to reinforce our presence in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Second, our decision was because of Mozambique’s growth potential due to its oil and gas projects. 2020 has been slightly difficult due to COVID-19, but we managed to open Access Bank in Mozambique in October 2020. At around the same time, Access Bank announced a potential merger with BancABC, and we are awaiting the Central Bank of Mozambique’s approval. We see this acquisition as a way to grow quickly and leverage on BancABC’s existing clients. We have a large expansion plan on the continent. Mature American and European banks are exiting the continent due to the crises in recent years, except for supporting some large operations here and there. Access Bank aims to be Africa’s gateway to the world. With the reputation we have been building across Africa, our vision is to be the world’s most respected African bank. We want to create a truly global African bank that can trade in all markets. This also means we must be present in the majority of countries in our market.
How has COVID-19 affected Access Bank opening its new operations in Mozambique, and how are you responding to this situation?
COVID-19 has changed our way of doing banking; in fact, it had the extremely positive impact of driving the maturity of our business in terms of digital advancement and innovation. Some companies that were forced to go digital now realize it can save them money while making them as effective—if not more—as before. The way we used to run our business—visiting clients, meeting for lunches, delivering cards by hand, and going to people’s businesses to open accounts—have all changed. We experienced roughly six months of adapting, and both us and our clients understand the way we should work from now on to mitigate all our initial issues in terms of client service. This is a new way for businesses to realize their operations. We now know that we can operate with many of our staff at home, and we understand the value of the disaster recovery plans we drew up in the past but had never used. We have implemented all the necessary measures to work within the pandemic situation for as long as it lasts. Only around 30% of our staff are working in the office; the majority are working from home. They are rotating on a 15-day basis. The greatest challenge was interacting with clients within the limits of COVID-19. People are good at adapting, and within a short time frame we managed to adapt our business to do the same things as before, ✖