By Dipo Olowookere
Diamond Bank Plc has been applauded by the Financial Sector Development for Africa (FSD Africa) for its professional dealings.
The agency, funded by the United Kingdom government through UK Aid, said it was pleased with the Nigerian lender, promising to continue to support the bank to deepen its financial inclusion drive.
At a dinner hosted by Diamond Bank in honour of visiting executives from FSD Africa, the Director in charge of Financial Services at the organisation, Mr Paul Musoke, said, “We commend Diamond Bank for employing professionalism in all their dealings with us. Even though the agency had partnerships with other banks and organizations across the continent, the partnership with Diamond
Bank was essentially our longest and most successful partnership amongst all.”
“We did not only provide funding but also worked closely with the team on ground,” he added.
In his remarks, chief executive of the financial institution, Mr Uzoma Dozie, disclosed that, “First of all, what I would say is that when we decided to go beyond this journey of redefining how we wanted to engage the Nigerian market, I don’t think that we could have done it using the old ways of banking, which was, you know, doing everything by yourself, and I think our successes achieved so far are as a result of partnership and collaboration with donor agencies such as EFIna, Women’s World Banking (WWB) and FSD Africa.”
On her part, Head of BETA Propositions at Diamond Bank, Ms Njideka Nwabueze, said the lender will continue to close the financial inclusion gap by creating products that would provide customers with access to financial services.
“After extensive research, we launched the BETA proposition in 2013: an account that enabled customers to save towards the rainy day.
“BETA targets market traders thus supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The proposition has reached over 600,000 clients (over 70 percent of whom engage in trade). Their savings enhances their ability to manage economic shocks,” she said.
