10th Years Anniversary: Jaiz Bank Celebrates Successes, Targets 50 Branches Nationwide

The Nigeria’s pioneer Non-Interest banking, Jaiz Bank Plc, has expressed optimism on future prospects of the bank even as it celebrates its achievements within a decade of operations.

It would be recalled that the bank was founded in 2003, licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2011 and commenced operations in On 6 January 2012, with just three branches located in Abuja, Kaduna and Kano.

The Managing Director/CEO of the bank, Hassan Usman,  flanked by other directors of the bank at its Pre-10th anniversary and Annual General Meeting (AGM) interactive session with Journalists in Abuja, revealed that given the growing patronage and expansion of scope of the bank’s operations, its branches have increased to 45 and will end the year with a total of 50 branches.

He enumerated that over the past 10 years, the bank’s balance sheet has shored up from N12 billion when it started operations to N300 billion by the end of 2021, while the staff strength also increased from 50 to the 2000.

He revealed that there have been much interests on the bank from the individuals, public sector and corporations, adding that the bank has maintained 40 percent profitability year on year for the last five years.

According to the Managing Director, “The concept is workable even in Nigerian environment, we’ve been vindicated; we have more interests now in this subsector by individuals, corporations and even public sector has also embraced the non-interest principles for no other reason but to derive the benefits associated with the system.

“We started with a number one customer, have almost a million customers; we were more at the beginning a corporate bank in terms of our offering, we have diversified the products offerings to corporate, SMEs and even in some cases we have experimented with micro to leave up to our mission of making lives better for Nigerians.

“Over the last couple of years we have experimented with working with the people of the bottom of the pyramid, especially women; providing equity type of financing them to develop their small businesses so that the households income will improve, the welfare of the family and the role of the women in the running of the family will be appreciated as it is being improved.”

He explained that the participants in this scheme are provided with insurance cover in case of risks associated with it to extent of a minimum of N100,000, adding that this is revolutionary.

Usman maintained that the experiences of the bank over the last 10 years had been rewarding just as the bank looks towards the next decade with optimism.

He alluded to the fact that the suspicion against Islamic banking is substantially gone, stressing that the bank is purely out for business and use the bank to unify the country.

Other areas he enumerated that the bank had invested include Education, mortgage financing, SMEs financing, auto-finance products and roads construction in which the bank at a time invested N100 billion in Sukuk bonds.