Entrepreneurs who seek services from Family Bank should look forward to working with an institution that takes care of their diverse financial needs.

They should expect to enjoy additional services offered by a big bank. That is the promise of the bank’s new chief executive officer and managing director Peter Munyiri.

In an interview, Mr Munyiri revealed that he has put in place strategies to grow the bank such that its customers do not have to go to competitors for their other financial needs to be met. After the re-organisation, Family Bank will be a one-stop shop for its customers and not an ‘incubator’ for other banks.

Customers will be able to find a range of products and services including: invoice discounting, letters of credit, guarantees, overdrafts, bill discounting, long-term lending, financial advisory services, mortgage products and a business club to support them.

He affirmed that he has at his disposal the talent and infrastructural platform to make this reality. Already, the bank has in place a robust IT platform meant to serve 10 million customers (nearly 10 times its current customer base of 900,000).

So confident is he about this that he declares Family Bank will go regional starting next year. “We have scouted two exciting markets and are putting strategies in place to go beyond East Africa within four years,” he said.

Service delivery
This will be by seeking out strategic partners rather than starting or establishing new institutions altogether.

Banking, asserted the Family Bank boss, is about talent and the astuteness of the bankers in delivering services, and he has assured the 1,200 staff that they will be part of the growing institution. Building a big bank, he insists, requires more people and his transformational strategy will not lead to job losses.

What he is helping them do is re-focus for improved productivity and set their sights high in the knowledge that they are helping build a giant Pan-African institution.

He spoke with pride when declared that he has the youngest, well-educated staff members in the industry (who are looking for mentorship and direction) and that he is prepared to motivate and lead them to drive change.

Mr Munyiri is getting each individual staff member to sign on as a voice of transformation and helping them integrate the bank’s values of winning together, humility, self-respect and transparency. Mr Munyiri said, having started as a microfinance institution, Family Bank has grown with the country’s small and medium enterprises. It now wants them to grow with it, into a big corporate. SMEs, he noted, are a huge catchment for the bank, whose 58 branches are located where this segment is found.

“We are busy building the capacity of our people to bring business and analysis of the risk profiles of our clients,” he said. “Our focus is to ensure that our products basket resonates with the needs of our customers.

“I have spoken with staff and mounted a campaign to exploit the bank’s balance sheet and there is excitement about this.”

Besides enabling SMEs to grow into mid-sized and, finally, fully-fledged corporates, the bank is also helping those at the lower end to transform into SMEs.

He hailed SMEs as the economy’s engine of growth largely because they do not require huge capital investments.

Mr Munyiri said the bank will highly customise its offering for each market segment by defining risk associated with banking them and putting in place appropriate mitigation measures.

“We want to remain relevant to Kenyans and East Africans in terms of transforming their lives,” the Family Bank CEO said. He pointed out that, in terms of number of branches and clients, Family Bank now ranks fourth in the country.

By : Evans Ongwae ( Business Daily )