We are positioned for strong flow between China and Africa -Stan. Chartered CEO

I come to Nigeria at least once a year. I love coming to Nigeria. This is an important and credible market for us at Standard Chartered Bank. As a bank, we have been here for a very long time. This is our second coming starting 17 years ago. We have a very huge history in Nigeria and we first opened for business over 100 years ago. This is a core part of our business and a huge growth business for us. We cover over 70 countries but Nigeria is a critically important country in Africa for us.  When you look at our clients in Asia and Middle East, Nigeria is a clear trading partner as well. At the moment, there is an amount of discussion about Renminbi (RMB) and Nigeria will be opened up very soon on our RMB and we want to make sure we offer our clients RMB accounts in the country linking our networks. Nigeria is an important country for us in Africa as part of our global network. We are expanding our corporate relationships over time. We are here for Africa.

Well in many ways, many of our clients are some of the leading people in the country. We bank most of the businessmen and women and many of the professionals. Our focus globally is to concentrate on the working professionals, right from when they are in school, when they leave university and even move with them as they work. Standard Chartered is an international bank, those who are going to work and engage in businesses across countries; have children going to school abroad specially gain the value we bring to customers. We do not have many branches, so we are not positioned to serve a lot of large population, but we are well positioned to serve people who are running businesses or qualified professionals who have international engagements. We have products across the spectrum. We keep our product range very simple because in retail you don’t need too many products but it is how they are delivered to the clients that is most important.

Nigerian banks are very impressive and they have grown very quickly over the last few years.  I think they are all seeing the shift towards working digitally and many of them are probably looking at the size of their branch network, to consider smaller locations and possibly fewer locations. This is across the world, there are fewer customers going in to branches to transact banking businesses and this is the trend globally. One of the things you would find happening in Nigeria is when the shopping centre gets built, the branches can move to the malls. This means they would move away from a whole street in to where people want to spend their time. We are going to see further digitization. At the moment there is a huge focus on digitizing our business end- to- end to meet the needs of the clients. Our clients do not want to queue at branches anymore. They do not want to sit in traffic jams, which exist in Nigeria similar to other cities around the world. People want to do banking business from the convenience of their homes at any time and so we are launching and upgrading our digital capabilities.

It would mean different jobs. For instance, as we digitize our processes, we get very talented people. So it is about re-training them and allowing them move up in their career and becoming more important as advisory roles with our clients.

What I am seeing here is really not different from many other markets where we operate.  If I go to Indonesia, Malaysia, India, it is the same.

It is a tricky one for many markets. Recently, we have seen quite a lot of pressure from some of the Central Banks to reduce interest rates. We also work closely with the governments to make sure that any changes happen smoothly but it is difficult for the banks to do that on their own, because we are paying high rates for deposits. The gap between lending and deposit interest rates is informed by expected loses and the cost of running the business. One of the reasons we are focusing on digitization is not only that it makes it easier for our clients to work with us, but it enables us to be more efficient also.

I think it is about adopting new ways of working. For the financial inclusion, one of the things we talked about which is important is digitizing banking. This is because for the financial inclusions, one of the things Central Bank of Nigeria is saying is not necessarily putting brick and mortar in places. Mobile banking is how to get to individuals and at the same time be able to bank them. For instance, we have launched mobile banking. There is opportunity for Nigeria to adopt the MPESA model in Kenya to deepen financial inclusion for day-to-day payments that can make dramatic difference.

What I know is that Nigeria adopts things quickly. I see a model going forward which would mirror some of the most sophisticated markets in the world. Nigeria would probably become more digital faster than some other markets, because of the challenge of physically getting around the city. This would compel people to adopt digital ways of working. This will drive changes in behaviour and for financial inclusion.  We can see that the Central Bank is focused on it and by incorporating new technologies, and working closely with government to get the right infrastructure in place, there is optimism going forward. As a bank, we would continue to partner with government to ensure that things are better.

Part of what differentiates us is our international network and our niche to drive and trade forex and investment flows. These are the core businesses of the bank- working with everybody from individuals to small businesses to the largest corporate. What we aimed to do is really focused on the ecosystem around these corporates. We also help small businesses to go international. For the SMEs we start basically with the basic trade financing capability. This will enable them to do their cross border transactions. Standard Chartered has a broader network in Asia, Africa and Middle East. Currently there is strong flow between China and Africa and we are positioned for it.

That percentage is not huge enough as Africa is a huge continent with many countries and we expect over time for that proportion to increase. Again, we want to bank more people and do more business with already existing clients. What we are doing is expanding our product range to make sure we are meeting the needs of our clients. For the fact that we are an international bank gives us the ability to create wealth for our clients by networking them and enabling them to invest in products. What we have launched in Asia that we want to bring to Nigeria is our video banking. This is incredibly convenient. We also teach our clients on how to use digital platforms.

We are working closely with our clients to help them through this challenge. The challenges with forex have impacted a lot of clients, but we have come up with some products to help them. For our clients who before now do a lot of importation, we are looking at ways to support them to produce the products here and also determine the short or long-term funding we can give them to do that.

Many of our clients are concerned at the moment and the message is that this country has amazing resources and talented people and it would get out of this recession quickly.