By Modupe Gbadeyanka
One of the leading lenders in the country, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, is ensuring that almost every part of Nigeria has access to financial services.
The company is also showing a strong determination to achieve the financial inclusion target of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), aimed to bring more people into the banking space.
First Bank has one of the best financial inclusion services in the country and this has been made possible by the team led by its Managing Director, Mr Adesola Adeduntan.
One of the initiatives he put together is the Firstmonie agent channel, which has now grown to 86,300 across 772 of the 774 local government areas of the federation.
This has helped the CBN mandate of ensuring the availability of affordable financial products and services to all individuals and groups of people in the country; irrespective of location, literacy levels, familiarity with technology and accessibility to modern infrastructural facilities.
The Firstmonie agents have been integral to filling the financial exclusion gap, providing convenient banking services that are easily accessible, thereby saving time and travel costs for individuals in the suburbs and remote environments that have no access to financial services.
Over 50 per cent of Firstmonie’s agents are in rural areas, contributing significantly to the development of the rural economy.
First Bank achieved this feat by partnering with and enrolling existing MSMEs in the rural areas into its agent banking network.
In doing this, it has built the most expansive bank-led agent banking network in Africa as through this scheme, the bank is creating sustainable socioeconomic value and empowering rural communities in unique ways.
In a recent interview, Mr Adeduntan explained that this strategy was a deliberately chosen because the bank wants its agent banking system to focus “on areas where the impact is real and significant, financial inclusion where it matters the most.”
