Skye Bank Restates Commitment to Promoting Entrepreneurship

The Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Skye Bank Plc. Mr. Timothy Oguntayo, has restated the commitment of the financial institution to building a virile and mutually beneficial partnership with its customers and business partners irrespective of the challenges in the operating environment.

A statement from the bank quoted Oguntayo to have disclosed this recently in Lagos, at the bank’s business roundtable which focused on distributive trade that brought together leading players in that sector.

Oguntayo, who said the forum was organised as a relationship deepening platform – to enable the bank know and understand the aspirations of the businessmen and receive feedback from them, said the meeting would also help the bank fashion solutions to the challenges faced by the businessmen.

He told the businessmen and enterprise owners that the bank would remain committed to its core values of service excellence, integrity, continuous learning, partnership and trust, noting that the bank remained committed to its vision of being a leading and first class commercial bank in the country.

The Skye Bank boss listed some of the initiatives implemented by the bank in recent times to serve customers better which included the launch of a customer service charter; its information technology transformation upgrade and the recent acquisition of Mainstreet Bank Limited, among others.

Speaking at the event, the Director General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Muda Lawal, in his goodwill message at the roundtable, was also quoted in the statement to have lauded the bank for developing and improving the capacity of its customers through seminars and workshops. He urged the bank to continue to do more.

Hoewever, he called on banks to reduce lending rates to manufacturing companies and businessmen for them to continue to be in business, adding that high interest rates are disincentive to businesses. In addition, he advised banks to go out for long tenured funds so that they could also in turn lend long term to companies, thereby reducing the pressure on companies to pay back within a short period of time.

The guest speaker at the event – an a renowned economist, who is also the Managing Consultant of BA & Associates, Dr. Biodun Adedipe, described the distributive trade sector as an important sector of the economy which contributes about 15 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product(GDP).

Adedipe described the Nigerian economy as a preferred destination of foreign investment in view of the large population of the country and the high purchasing power of the citizenry. The economist urged the Nigerian government to put in place infrastructure so that the economy could perform more efficiently.