SPEECH BY NOK BWONDITI- THE CEO OF CREDIT BANK DURING THE LUNCHEON UNITED BUSINESS ASSOCIATION, KISUMU CHAPTER AT THE IMPERIAL HOTEL ON FEBRUARY 6, 2011 AT 11.00 AM Chairman – Mr. Nasrulah Miraly Vice Chairman – Vinod Halai Immediate Former Chairman – Kaushik Panchmatia Hon Secretary – Hiren Mehta Branch Manager, Credit Bank, Clare Moraa Obino Distinguished Business people of Kisumu, Esteemed Customers Media Partners Ladies & Gentlemen
On behalf of the Board, Management and Staff of Credit Bank, I am pleased to welcome you to this luncheon generously sponsored by Credit Bank Brand in your honor. I believe you all know Credit Bank which is
one of the country’s
enterprising young players in the banking industry. This year around August, we will celebrate our Silver Jubilee and as such, we are committed to claiming our rightful place in the country’s financial sector by providing top of the range products and services that will delight you. Rebranding of CB As you may be aware, we have just rebranded the CB Brand whereby we have dropped the worn-out looking image and now want to reposition the brand in the industry and provide it with fresh impetus for growth. As part of that rebranding, we have adopted the new approaches to managing our business and we are vigorously living our brand values in line with our tagline, “My Friend, My Bank”. In the real business world, the old adage says that do not mix business with friendship. But, we at CB, we do not find that a problem at all since our customers are the greatest supporters of our brand. Rich CB Heritage Our heritage dates back to 1986 when Credit Bank was incorporated under the Brand name, Credit Kenya Limited and commenced operations the same year as a financial institution. This was as a result of
the wisdom of four prominent businessmen who incorporated CKL. Later in 1995, it was upgraded to a fully-fledged commercial bank under the Brand name Credit Bank Limited (CB). It has since been a profitable outfit, achieving steady growth over the years as we aspire; “To be a Leading Indigenous Brand, Most Admired for its Great People, Great Service, Great Innovation and Great Performance”. We are also guided by five values which are; Integrity, Excellence, Proactive Communication & Collaboration, Customer Focus and finally, Social Responsibility. We have also revamped our products into three categories of Corporate Banking, Treasury and Retail Banking. Some of the exciting products under the Corporate Banking segment include: 1.Asset Financing- for equipment, all kinds of machinery and all kinds of motor vehicles. 2.Ordinary Loans-Term loans maximum of 5 years 3.Overdrafts for working capital 4.Trade Financing i.e. Letter of Credit (L.C’s) 5.Bonds -Performance Bonds, Bid Bonds etc 6.Guarantees variety of guarantees The Treasury products include: i)Forex- spot market, forward, currency swaps etc ii) Investments-Treasury bills, Treasury bonds, corporate bonds iii) Money markets- forex accounts, USD dollar, Sterling Pounds, Euros and Indian Rupees.
iv)Forex Savings Account-USD 5,000 and interest rate-1% p.a Under the Retail Banking category, we offer a variety of products/services including ; SME Products/Services such as: Asset Financing Invoice Discounting Guarantees Loans-Terms and ODs Letters of Credit Bonds Personal Products Services such as: Personal Loans (My Friendly Loan) Business Current Account Personal Current Account Savings Accounts Salary/Remittance Club Account Youth Account and finally The Kiddy Account But today I wasn’t going to talk about CB Brand; you probably know enough about it already. When your leaders asked me to talk in today’s luncheon, they gave me a freehand to choose a subject of my
preference; which wasn’t an easy task. As I was running out of time, I decided maybe I should tackle a topic that is not new to you but still of sufficient significance to warrant your audience/attention. As a business community, you are probably very conversant with corporate giving; that act of individuals like yourselves getting into the coffers of your respective organizations, to get a few dimes to give the poor! Or when you are set upon an laborious task of providing much needed resources to a community; be it food, water or educational facilities! That is what I want us to explore more today and possibly share our experiences on the same and its significance to the businesses that we run. Why is it important that corporate and businesses in general give back to the community? Do they get to do this effectively? Can they do it differently? Do they deliver value that would empower communities? Does it come from the heart or is it mere cosmetics? Why Community Empowerment? The United Nations recognizes the need to support poor communities to a level where they enjoy food security and live in dignity and decent lives within the Millennium Development Goals. The first of the eight goals dwells on the essential need to eradicate poverty and hunger.
Poverty is the principal cause of hunger. The causes of poverty include poor people's lack of resources, an extremely unequal income distribution in the world and within specific countries, conflict, and hunger itself. As of 2008, the World Bank had estimated that there were 1.3 billion poor people in developing countries who live on 1.25 dollar a day or less. In Kenya, close to 60% of the population live on or less than a dollar a day, making it extremely important that Government and businesses begin to focus on the plight of the poor and institute measure to remedy the situation. For businesses, it is even more important because the community makes up the market for their businesses, making it imperative that they pay attention to their need for empowerment in order to make them a viable source of revenues. What makes this more urgent is that poverty levels in the country are rising while life expectancy is going down. Literacy levels are also being negatively impacted by the inability of the poor to meet the cost of decent education even as the world is committed to ending poverty by 2015. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there were 925 million hungry people in the world in 2010, 239 million of them are found in Sub-Saharan Africa. What are the urgent issues for the Kenyan businesses need to focus their citizenship efforts towards?:
Falling Standards of Education: There is an opportunity to help revamp facilities in public schools and support the governement’s efforts to provide free education at both primary and secondary schools. Food Shortages: The Chinese believe the best way to feed a hungry person is by giving them a fishing rod and teaching them to fish. Businesses need to stop the habit of donating foods to hunger victims but give them the capacity to grow their own food into the future. Water Scarcity: It is estimated that over one billion people across the world do not have access to clean drinking water even when 70% of the world’s surface is under water. Businesses have the opportunity to support through such efforts as drilling boreholes and providing facilities
for rainwater
harvesting. Entrepreneurship Training: This is a sure way for businesses to ensure that there is sustainability in our economy. It can be done by training people who have
exciting
business ideas to bring them to fruition through structured training and availability of seed capital to finance initial operations. We need to identify and support
young brains with fantastic ideas to become
tomorrow’s innovators so that our economy can thrive into the future and support the creation of wealth and employment. Taking Communities to the Digital Era: We know that progress in Kenya can only come if our people embraced information technology. The miracle that is internet has not really reached the grassroots yet. That is where we can make a huge impact, by connecting them to the information super highway; where they can find information on markets for their products, colleges for affordable quality educations, sources of quality goods and services for on-selling and even get contacts that would come in handy
for
purposes of enriching their lives. Caring for the Environment: How often do we stop to wonder how come life seems to go on so seamlessly like automated products using non-exhaustible power for ages? It starts and ends into eternity. And do we ask ourselves what will happen if something small changes- just a little; like experiencing more temperature than usual or more floods than usual or more pollution than usual? Do we care about the environment like our lives depend on it which they do? Innovating for Sustainability: The world is today engrossed in the climate change debate; about what needs to be done to reduce green house gas emissions that are largely responsible for global warming. But there is also the sustainability
component of human life and the role businesses can play through innovation of affordable high value products and services for the bottom of the pyramid market, high nutrition foods for the poor, financing arrangements for non-collateralised borrowing by the poor, cheap modes of transportation for the economically marginalized; etc. We have a chance to search our souls; ask ourselves hard questions about the role we must play to make this world a better place for us and others to live in; the need to be our brothers’ keepers and the obligation to do good. One Karl-Henrik Robert, founder of Natural Step once said: "I don't believe that the solutions in society will come from the left or the right or the north or the south. They will come from islands within organizations, islands of people with integrity who want to do something." These are very inspiring words for the community of leaders who put society needs at the fore of their organisation’s business agenda.
But the million dollar questions is: Are businesses doing this the way it should be done? If the drive towards corporate foundations is anything to go by, businesses are trending towards an efficient and structured way of supporting communities. Is it just a fad or is it geared towards delivering value? The jury is out there on this.
Marketers will tell you that for the amount of money you spend on communities you must get value for it – in publicity. But corporate social responsibility is about giving back to the community because you are ethically obligated. Should businesses be obsessed with the desire for headlines and pictorials or just be satisfied with doing “good”? I would like to conclude by quoting William Ford Junior on the necessity for us to endeavour to empower communities.
He says:
“Social
obligation is much bigger than supporting worthy causes. It includes anything that impacts people and the quality of their lives."
Thank you.
