Damenews L-R: Bamidele Osinlu, Head, Cash Management, Transaction Banking; Bashir Adepoju, Group Head, Retail Banking South; Tina Sobola, Customer Development Manager, Distributor & Key Account, Lafarge Africa Plc; Bolatito Akiboye, Head, KDF/Wholesale, Value Chain Management, Transaction Banking, FirstBank; Ukandu Ukandu, Group Head, CBG Services & Conglomerates FirstBank and Mobolade Ojeahere, Group Head, Transaction Banking, FirstBank at the FirstBank Key Distributors’ Forum held in Abeokuta, recently.
In its bid to lessen the challenges confronting the business industry in the country, First Bank of Nigeria Limited and Lafarge Africa have offered financial solutions to key cement distributors in the Southwest.
The Group Head, Transaction Banking, FirstBank, Mobolade Ojeahere, said the customers’ forum was an opportunity to assist cement distributors in the region, to sustain their businesses and to have an assurance of availability of cement in the Nigerian building industry.
Ojeahere said the forum held at Park Inn in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, over the weekend, would help the distributors to improve their businesses and equally help them in identifying various challenges confronting their businesses.
“The purpose of this event is to bring our customers who are distributors closer together in a forum where we will engage, discuss some of the challenges we are seeing in the macro-environment in general, how we can work closer with them to identify products and proffer solutions that will enable value creation for their businesses.
“FirstBank will provide the support that will help grow their sales more efficiently in a cost-effective approach, this will enable a trickledown effect and also create value further down the ecosystem and distributive chain”.
“The value achieved is when we come together with our large clients like Lafarge to help them drive their sales and growth through their distributors, is that it engenders the spirit of collaboration and engagement, We ensure that we leverage our capacity as Trusted financial advisers to harness the data from their ecosystem and take advantage of innovative technology to solve some of the challenges we see in the economy and to create opportunities both for Lafarge and for these distributors,” Ojeahere said.
In her remarks, the Head, Value Chain Management at First Bank, Bolatito Akiboye, advised the customers to utilise the TOD facility offered them for the purpose they were given. She noted that one of the financial solutions is a loan facility named Temporary OverDraft (TOD).
She noted that the bank, among other things, offers low interest rates with zero collateral to cement distributors.
While the Customer Relations Manager at Lafarge, Augustina Sobola, asserted that the customers are banking with the most experienced and well-doing financial institution.
She assured that the company would keep supporting cement distributors to help them stay afloat in their businesses.
Sobola noted that the industry has been through difficult times, and that “it is the time that customer-centric organisation would be supporting its customers.
“The industry has gone through so much in recent times and we will leave no stone unturned in supporting our businesses. there has been three price increments this year, so this is the best time for us to support our distributors”.
The meeting tagged, “Key Distributors’ Forum” was attended by major cement distributors from the six States of the SouthWest region.
Culled from Tribune
