News
Savannah
Bank Moves Closer to Resumption- Management
Written by Ben-Bright
Mkpuma, Abuja
Five months after
formally receiving the nod to resume banking business, Savannah
Bank Plc has begun the process of the resuming banking
operations. The interim management of bank has since moved into
its zonal headquarters office, in the federal capital, Abuja
Mrs. Patricia Nwobodo
wife of Chief Jim Nwobodo, who is also the executive director of
the bank however disclosed that the bank has “engaged financial
and IT consultants to determine the level of work that the bank
has to do to help it determine what banking category to settle
for”.
According to Sunny Igwe
Okoro who represented Mrs. Nwobodo, “after consultants are done
that is when the bank will know whether to be regional, national
or international”.
The bank is carrying out
a revaluation to ascertain where we are and what is left of old
Savannah bank”. Savannah bank he said is interested in national
banking but since consultants are still evaluating the state of
the bank to establish what type of risk management it should
adopt, the IT infrastructure to use it is after the revaluation
exercise that the bank will decide whether to go national.
Savannah bank he said
has buildings all over the country to make it qualify for
national banking but there is no management in place. Also the
bank has to meet all the criteria for opening and falling into a
category which is why it has resumed country-wide renovation of
its branches.
Any hope of having the
bank drop its name he said will be the board’s decision but he
sounded unsure if that would ever happen when he said that “if
you have a winning name you don’t change it. The bank was closed
for political reasons and not that it went under”.
In addition, the bank
has opened a contact office in Abuja from where it would
interact with regulators and address enquiries from customers.
Mr. Sunny Igwe Okoro at the press briefing noted that Savannah
bank was “making all efforts to come out (start business) and as
such has opened an office in Abuja to interact with regulators
and answer questions from customers”.
Apart from opening the
contact office in Abuja, the bank is also renovating its
branches across country so that after the completion of the
renovations in each branch, customers can come and make
enquiries but he quickly added that no payments will be made for
now.
In the past the bank he
said had toyed with the idea of opening geopolitical zone
offices to interact with and answer questions from customers,
but he explained that “now if you open, customers money must be
ready” which is why full banking operations are on hold.
IT experts he said are
working to retrieve details of customers’ deposits to ensure
that nobody’s money is missing and this will help the bank carry
out proper customer verification exercises.
Okoro also reiterated
that Mr. Richard Abrahams is still the interim board chairman of
the bank. He disclosed that the “take over proper (when Savannah
bank got the letter from CBN to reopen) was done in November
2010”, as a result the bank was taking its time to get
everything in terms of its capital base and what category to
fall into right
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