Savannah yet to decide on bank category

Five months after receiving the nod to resume banking business, Savannah Bank Plc is yet to decide on what category of banking it wants to engage in when it starts proper banking business.

Addressing journalists in Abuja yesterday, Mrs. Patricia Nwobodo, wife of Chief Jim Nwobodo and 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”.

At present, the bank is “carrying out a revaluation to ascertain where we are and what is left of old Savannah Bank”. The bank, he said, is interested in national banking but since consultants are still evaluating the state of the bank to establish what kind 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 that 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.

source : The Nation