Divisional Head, Retail, Small and Medium Enterprise and eBusiness, Unity Bank Plc, ‘Funwa AkinmadeThere is an assumption that Nigerian banks profit from the difficulties people go through during tough times rather than support them. To what extent do you think this is true?
Everywhere we go with Yanga, we go with our HMO partners. And the service is affordable. The partners are very supportive. We render free health checks. The health checks cost about N10,000 per person. But they are rendered at no cost to Nigerian women who are struggling to cope with the economic challenges. That is part of our way of giving back to society.
We go along with a mobile BVN machine to enrol unregistered women who need BVN for account opening. This is a win for women who do not have the time to visit a bank. That is also deepening the financial inclusion drive. Everywhere we go, we create what we call Yanga woman who is a female banking agent.Yanga is a product of extensive research and peer review. From the name to its features, it is driven by research.
There will be a gap in KYC protocols when you go to the market to convince individuals to open accounts. How do you deal with this? Yanga is about market women who are into small trading and not necessarily big shop owners. There are cases where some women say they want a higher version of Yanga because their business turnovers have increased. At that point, all they need is to provide additional documents and other requirements to upgrade the accounts. But Yanga is a sufficient starting point for every market woman who has not operated a bank account.There are three added values.