UBA Targets 25% Consumer Lending Portfolio

Nume Ekeghe

The United Bank of Africa (UBA) has revealed plan to aggressively increase its consumer lending portfolio from 10 per cent to about 25 per cent.

According to the bank, increasing consumer loans would be a much-needed catalyst to inclusive economic growth.

The Group Head Consumer Lending Mr. Anant Rao, said this yesterday, during a virtual media parley where he spoke on the theme: ‘Stimulating Nigeria’s Economic Growth and Impacting People’s Lives.’

He also revealed the bank’s re-launch of its ‘Click Credit’ with a new feature which enables customers access loans in 3 minutes.

Speaking on plans to increase its consumer lending, Rao said: “Our guiding principle, I just want to stress is that we have a customer first philosophy which drives what we do in UBA.

“And in everything we do, we are embedding this philosophy weather it is process, technology, compliance risk management and everything has to have the customer first philosophy.

“The consumer lending space is an opportunity to grow across Africa and fortunately, Nigeria has the demographic dividend. With more than 200 million population, we can see the opportunity. In fact, every individual has borrowing needs and aspirations.

“We want to resize ourselves and our operating model and ensure that in the future, consumer lending contributes a significant portion of our loan portfolio. We want to be very aggressive and we want to be prudent.”

He added: “Today it contributes less than 10 per cent, but our ambition is to go beyond 25 per cent. We have the right under riding infrastructure, right technology platforms and the right recovery infrastructure.”

“Our vision is to be most innovative and preferred bank in Nigeria and in Africa in terms of consumer lending, with the best consumer credit in the market. Obviously, we are not going to lend indiscriminately and recklessly as we want to ensure we protect our capital and depositors’ money and ensure that we are very responsible. “We understand the market and we have the ability to under right very well and we have the ability to recover our money very well. We want to be accessible, convenient and affordable to all our customers.”

Speaking further on the bank’s lending strategy and the revamped ‘Click Credit’ he said: “It would be a very strategic differentiator for UBA in this market and everyone who owns a mobile phone can borrow money from UBA and we are using a lot of technology and automation algorithms using artificial intelligence to ensure we profile customers well and we know whom we are lending to and also create an experience for our customers.”