What is it about Banking and Bankers in Nigeria? Nowhere in the entire world do you have the frontpages of newspapers filled with Managing Directors, Executive Directors and Marketers grinning and shaking hands with State executives.
What is Banking, in Nigeria or anywhere else in the world and why do we seem to practice a style of banking that defies understanding?There seems to be the understanding that banking is all about deposits and the more deposits a bank has, the more viable and useful it is to businesses and the economy.
Do we employ and pay excessive salaries to people who, seemingly qualified in driving around each day in suits at great expense to the bank, knocking from door-to-door seeking deposits? Could this not have been done with a gang of unemployed youth?
An Executive Director spends more time on the road hob-nobbing with Ministers, Governors and State officials than sitting behind the desk and plotting strategies for utilizing the huge deposits that bank eventually have.
If the CBN or the Government decided that non-state Banks could not keep deposits from government institutions, how many banks in Nigeria will survive?
What would happen to shareholders monies invested in our banks and would bankers eventually be forced to practice the tenets of banking as we know it around the world?
I have never seen anywhere in the world where an Executive Director of a meaningful bank is seen so frequently shaking hands at every given photo opportunity with government officials. Neither have I seen government officials go bowl in hand into banks to ask for money to run their institutions.
Managing Directors and Executive Directors of banks in Nigeria are more famous as traveling individuals than whatever the banks themselves are known for. Glamour-style banking?
Little wonder when the bottom falls out that poor governance plays a great role in the fall of many of Nigeria’s banking and finance institutions.
The recent banking crisis in Nigeria highlighted the shortcomings of banking professionalism and professionals in Nigeria at the risk of smaller non-government and non-family investors.
The madness which is large overheads on staffing and fancy infrastructure whilst there is great underutilization of a vast number of staff and such infrastructure makes one ownder what exactly these people learn during their 2-week executive courses at Harvard.
Without the lifeline of government funds, can Nigerian banks actually survive in a competitive and dynamic and transparent banking environment?
Is the measure of a banks success solely down to the number of branches they open across the country simply to be strategically positioned to accept more state-controlled funds?
Depositories are very different from banks. Banks provide products and services for the larger number of customers who are individuals and business large and small. There are a larger number of smaller businesses than large nes in any country. All form a vast pool and serve as cogs that keep the economic machinery ticking over.
Looking back at the list of Nigeria’s biggest debtors and eliminating the private companies that were excessively leveraged through bank loans, it is clear that in Nigeria there is no hope for any business startups and small business that seek banking and financial support for development.
If you are not a big player and a friend of the MD, forget about any glorified dreams of business development and personal growth. You are simply one of those required to stick your money in a bank and shut up in the dark little corner of the maze.
The regulatory authorities need to take a closer look at the operations of our so-called banks and determine who is really there to run a bank and those that should be down-graded to depositories.
Banks in Nigeria will do well to greatly reduce the number of staff they have, improve on technology and have only 10 to 20 Executive Directors to act as deposit acquisition executives whilst getting rid of all the needless overpaid and over-burdened staff.
Online banking will service the needs of the smaller operator while the champagne and strawberries flow at executive syncophancy and brown-nose photo opportunities.
What do you think?
