IT, Key to Afribank Development

Osa Osunde, chairman Afribank plc has said that information technology would continue to be the platform that drives the bank’s service offerings and operations. To sustain its leading position in the market, the bank has extensively overhauled and upgraded its infrastructural facilities including customer support, technical support service, database administration service, help desk and operation systems.

The chairman, disclosed this recently at the 39^{th Annual General Meeting of the bank held at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja. Osunde revealed that the bank has strengthened its operations and also enhanced its service delivery capacity to enable it offer more e-banking solutions and services to its clients even as he said that the bank has grown into a global brand with branches spreading across Africa in particular. In this regard, the bank has extended its operations and business locations by additional 50 branches to make it 300 even he said plans are on the way to increase it to 350 before the end of the financial year. He assured that every new branch of the bank is equipped with modern IT facilities that will boost its operations effectively.}

The chairman of the bank promised that the bank’s IT platform would adequately cope with its growing clientele as well as enable it to offer cutting edge and un-interrupted services to its customers. While commending the telecommunications sector, he said the sector has received significant investment over the years with the coming on board of Etisalat, the fifth global telecommunications company and emphasized that IT is the mainstream of banks and e-business developments in the world today. He said that with Etisalat fast coming up in addition with other telecommunications companies already in existence, banks’ operations would continue to expand as fast as possible in Nigeria. Nigeria is now rated the largest telecom market in Africa with an estimated 42.9 million active subscribers.

Sebastian Adigwe, group managing director of the bank in his contribution added that the bank was currently implementing a transformation process called Tiger which he said is targeted at up scaling the bank’s information technology infrastructure to meet market imperatives. According to him when project Tiger is completed, the bank would have an infrastructure back bone that will be second to none in the industry in terms of effectiveness.

It would be recalled that the bank received the most improved bank award at Kaduna International Trade Fair and Omatek Computers Plc as best supportive bank of the year.