Hamid Ayodeji
The Chief Executive Officer of the Shared Agents Network Expansion Facility (SANEF), Ronke Kuye, has reiterated the commitment of the body towards meeting its target of establishing 500,000 agents across the country by 2020.
Kuye, who said this during a financial inclusion stakeholders’ forum in Lagos yesterday, pointed out that the company was on track to achieving the target that was given to it by the Central Bank of Nigeria, as it currently has 156,000 agents.
According to her, the company would be working together with the super agents as well as the agents to drive and ensure financial inclusion in the country.
Kuye explained, “Banks are not usually sited in rural areas so it is important for us to have financial representatives in form of agents in all the areas banks cannot have their branches in order to achieve the financial inclusion rate of 80 percent by 2020.
“In addition to all of these efforts towards driving financial inclusion, we ensure there are training programmes for the agents, financial literacy and campaign awareness, technology platform that would enable everyone that wants to open an account with any agent bank outlet.
“Where ever the SANEF sign is, it is safe for customers to go there to open an account, do BVN enrolment, transfers, cash in and cash out transactions. We are collaborating with the Bank of Industry and other stakeholders to ensure that there are products for the agents to offer to the public; such as micro pension, micro insurance and micro credit.
Also Speaking at the event, the Head, Financial Inclusion Secretariat, CBN, Joseph Attah, who was represented by the Assistant Director Finance Development, Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr Paul Oluikpe, said, “To spur all stakeholders to action and engineer a measurable path towards achievement, the financial inclusion Secretariat has outlined a number of workable assumptions around SANEF’s target of 500,000 agents by 2020.
“Considering the fact that SANEF currently has over 100,000 agents in 2019; if each of these agents signs on 6.9 accounts per month, that would translate to 83 accounts per year and then cumulating to 8.3 million accounts by the end of 2019, thus precisely fulfilling our 2019 target of including 8.3 million people for this year.
“In modelling this scenario, we have held constant all other variables in the mix such as Deposit Money Banks, Microfinance Banks, National Peer Educator Programme activities and many other activities undertaken by stakeholders of the financial inclusion space.”
