African Bankers Award: BoI emerges SME bank of the year

The Bank of Industry won two awards at the 202o African Banker Awards that recently held on the sidelines of the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meeting.

BOI was named the SME bank of the year and was also recognised for raising the deal of the year through its €1 billion syndicated loan facility from the international capital market.

The award event, which held virtually featured financial institutions and projects across the 54 countries of Africa, as well as the international community.

The awards committee said the SME bank of the year award was for an “institution that has considerably catalyzed funding to the private sector in Africa and promoted enterprise development by facilitating credit and funding for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and providing technical assistance; and supporting institutions for growth of SMEs”.

Receiving the award, Kayode Pitan (pictured), BoI’s managing director, thanked the award committee for the recognition and President Muhammadu Buhari for providing the vision the bank is currently running with.

Pitan said: “The award is very important to us because it means we are working in line with the president of Nigeria’s plan to have at least 10 million people employed and also support the SMEs to make that possible.

“So, once again we want to thank Mr President and also thank the federal and state governors who are partnering with us to make this possible.

“We also want to thank commercial banks for supporting their customers to access the facilities we provide.

“Through our various programmes, we were able to support over 14,000 youths in 2019; and this year, we are working harder to improve on that achievement.”

Other Nigerians that won awards at the ceremony were Zainab Ahmed, minister for finance, budget and national planning, who was named minister of the year; and Herbert Wigwe, Access Bank MD, who won the African banker of the year award.