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Wema Bank's group Managing Director, Adebisi Omoyemi, has assured shareholders of the bank that it would pay dividends...
Wema Bank's group Managing Director, Adebisi Omoyemi, has assured shareholders of the bank that it would pay dividends for the year ended March 31, 2006.
Omoyeni said the bank would not pay anything less than 20 kobo, hinging his reasons on the superlative performance of the bank in the year ended March 31, 2006.
Said he 'you recall that last year we did not give dividend, but I can assure our shareholders that we will not pay anything less than 20 kobo this year."
He said the result of the various initiatives they have taken so far are beginning to manifest in their balance sheet, stating that their action plan include quick and successful completion, of the integration of human capital, systems and processes, customers, markets, delivery channels, finance and accounting and the culture of the merged banks.
Giving an inkling of the bank's performance for the year ended, he said the bank's deposit base in the 9 months ended December 2005 which was N61 billion rose to N84 billion at the end of March 31, 2006. Profit after tax that was N1.5 billion also increased to over N3 billion for the year ended.
He said the bank had mapped out various strategies to meet with post consolidation challenges in the industry, saying that the bank was set to be industry leader in not distant time.
The group managing director added that they had concluded plans to embark on aggressive branching and alternative business channel deployment, stressing they would also develop on line and card payment solutions and maintain strategic alliances.
He said, 'presently, we have 136 branches in 27 states including Abuja, the nation's capital. We are set to increase it to 200 in all states of the federation before 2007".
He said the strength of the bank lies on its ethical, conservative and compliant with regulations, strong representations in commercially viable centres across the country and a strong balance sheet.
He also confirmed that they would continue to finance the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the country, and added that he would deploy his expertise and experience in retail banking to provide the needed high quality services.