UBA well positioned to meet Africa’s banking needs –Alawuba
By Chinwendu Obienyi
The Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, Oliver Alawuba, has said that the bank’s consistent investment in strengthening its digital channels have been paying off as UBA is well-positioned to meet the growing demand of its customers across Africa and beyond.
Alawuba said this during the visit of the bank’s new executives to the Nigerian Exchange Limited’s (NGX) Head Office in Lagos recently. This follows the release of its Half-year (H1) 2022 financial results to the investing public last week.
Speaking on UBA’s driving factor over the past few years, he said that bank have invested so much in digital banking while adding that this has culminated in the growth of its customer base.
We have great digital banking capabilities and we also have a growing customer base. Today we have over 30 million customers across various platforms and these customers are transacting. 90 per cent of our transactions are done digitally and we are looking at 95 per cent shortly. This has been helping us to ensure that we manage our cost of operations and to deliver excellent customer service to overtime.”
He explained that the bank’s foray into the larger African market 17 years ago continues to yield largely for the institution, as presently, activities in the Africa market account for over 50 per cent of the banks’ profitability, with room for even more opportunities going forward.
On plans and strategy for the remaining half of the year, Alawuba said, “As it stands, UBA can lead in Nigeria and in Africa, and we the new management are here to ensure that UBA takes the leadership position in every country we operate in. We will continue to focus on the customer. We are committed to our Customer first philosophy. The customer determines what we do at every point in time and we will ensure that we do all it takes to satisfy them optimally.”
He also informed the exchange of UBA’s willingness to partner with the NGX to achieve its goals of unifying Africa.
“The other African countries look to Nigeria to play a significant role and for us at UBA, our vision and mission is intertwined with Africa. And so as a bank, we can do a lot together with the NGX in the area of making sure that millennials and GenZ can key into the opportunities we have.”
