Zenith Bank GMD Explains Why Its Difficult For SMEs To Get Loans From Banks - TM NEWS ONLINE

TMnews

10th TMnews Summit

10th TMnews Summit

Zenith Bank

Zenith Bank
Zenith

Popular Posts

Adron Homes

Adron Homes
Advert

All-rounder

All-rounder
All-rounder

METRO

Zenith Bank GMD Explains Why Its Difficult For SMEs To Get Loans From Banks

Share This

Zenith Bank GMD Explains Why Its Difficult For SMEs To Get Loans From Banks


 

The Group Managing Director of Zenith Bank, Mr. Ebenezer Onyeagwu  has discussed the impressive positive returns recorded this year by the bank. He also shared some insights on the relationship between commercial banks in Nigeria and Small/Medium Enterprise business owners. Onyeagwu gave all these insights while speaking in an interview with Press.

On why Nigerian banks charge high-interest loans, making it difficult for small business owners to get single-digit loans for their business, the Zenith Bank GMD explained that the operational costs and regulatory costs involved in running a bank usually sets the pace for every other thing. He listed examples of operational costs involved in running a single bank branch and how all that adds to the bottom line at the end of the day.

 He also highlighted regulatory costs which are not particularly known by people outside the banking sector as one of the costs of doing business banks face. These two factors mainly contribute to the high-interest rates banks charge on loans.

“Our cost profile depicts the operating environment. Within the year we saw an upward review in fuel price, which accounted for the increase in our fuel cost. Again, when you are looking at cost of doing business, you also need to look in total, how businesses are being conducted. If I set up a branch today, I would need to provide my infrastructure, I need to provide power, water and in some cases, we even construct the road to provide access to the branch location. So, as a result of the poor state of infrastructure, you see that businesses would now have to contend with providing these resources to get their operations running. So, if we have more available and cheaper utility services and infrastructure to support businesses, of course, the cost would go down.

Then, looking at cost of doing business in banking, it goes beyond those operational costs. We also have things like regulatory cost. A bank like Zenith, given our size, the burden of regulatory cost on us is heavy. By regulatory cost here, I am referring to the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation premium and the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria fee. So, because of our size, if you look at the numbers, you will see that these regulatory costs account for a whopping 28 percent of our overhead. So, all of them come together to add to the cost of doing business for us as a banking institution in the country,” Onyeagwu said.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Pages