In the face of cash crunch and apparent banks’ technology near-collapse that rattled many Nigerians during the recent Naira Redesign policy, Sofri; a loans, savings and investments bank licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), happens to be one of the few that provided succour to the people.
Sofri recently trended on Twitter for its uptime and optimal services to the customers. Well, could it be because the player is relatively new in the block with fewer customer base since it was launched only about a year ago?
In this interview, Barnabas Okwudibie, the Chief Operating Officer of Sofri powered by Links Microfinance Bank, a subsidiary of DLM Capital Group, expatiate on how they did it and the plans for the future after hitting 60,000 customer base in just seven months; insisting that Sofri as a Lifestyle Digital Bank is prepared for Africa-wide expansion.
Barnabas spoke to Peter Oluka:
For the sake of our reader, kindly, tell us a brief of your background
My name is Barnabas Okwudibie, the Chief Operating Officer of Sofri powered by Links Microfinance Bank, a subsidiary of DLM Capital Group.
Links Microfinance Bank launched Sofri Bank a few months back; What has been the penetration rate (in the market)?
Thank you for this question. It has been a great journey actually. Like you rightly said, Links Microfinance Bank was acquired by DLM Capital Group about two years ago and we went ahead to launch Sofri Digital Bank last year. Since then, we have been able to prove to the markets our intentions; today, our customers trust us. We’ve been able to come up with innovation around the digital banking lending space. We built a one stop shop for our customers to bring banking closer to them. Despite that glorious journey we believe there’s too much to do when we look at the Nigerian market.
What are the unique offerings of Sofri digital Bank?
Sofri offers bespoke digital banking experience. We do both online and offline lending. By online lending, we lend via our digital mobile app.
We also loan to customers in the public service and the private organisations. Our customers have access to transfer money with ease. They can make multiple transfers at the click of a button. We are one of the few banks in our space that offer this service.
Aside from that, you can make payment with Sofri via a card which is our ATM card. It is very effective. The downtime is about zero. So you can enjoy prominent banking with ease; top up data or recharge, pay utility bills on the Sofri app.
Looking at the elephant in the room: The cashless policy implementation by the CBN/banks was greeted by cries by many Nigerians. Is it that the people are not prepared or the technology is not robust enough. What do you think led to the transactions’ failures?
For me, I’ll take that question from a personal perspective. So, the cashless policy has very good objectives. However, considering where we are, we must have observed some issues in the implementation. It is a learning curve for Nigeria; the regulators, the operators, and other stakeholders in the system. I can’t say the policy has failed; it is just that we keep learning and improving the system. We see areas we have to make-up and ensure that everything goes well. We operators in the banking sector need to ensure that yes, we have good technology in place to be able to serve the customers while the public should quickly embrace the cashless policy, embrace the use of technology to improve the transactions.
The other aspect is the enlightenment of the people. I don’t think if the regulator had carried out enough orientation for the people, probably we should have experienced less issues.
Links Microfinance Bank through Sofri rolled out a campaign at the heat of the cashless policy implementation challenges. The reward campaign in which 100 customers get 10,000 a week. Tell us more about it?
Sofri is a lifestyle digital bank. We are proud to be one of the banks in Nigeria that give back to the customers. What we have decided to do is to see that we have encouraged the under-digitized population in the market. When they come to us to open an account we are able to ‘give back’ to them.
So, we thought of the best way to do this which gave rise to the reward promo. Just download the app on the iOS or Google Play Store to create and account, you qualify for a raffle. The raffle is done every Thursday by 12 Noon.
Just follow us on social media for a live stream. Once you are among the winners you get credited N10,000. We have been doing this for the past three weeks which has been a wonderful experience. We roll out N1 million every week.
You know we are talking about cash crunch; do you give the winners cash or it is transferred to their Sofri account?
They get credited instantly via the account they provided. We want to encourage more people to embrace digital payment. They are also encouraged to get the Sofri ATM card for cash withdrawal. It is a very transparent process and everything is Live streamed on social media.
What’s been the feedback from the customers (winners) so far?
It has been wonderful. Like I said earlier, in our society today people want to trust institutions to do business with them. The customers who have won from the raffle exercise have given good testimonials about the bank and they’ve come to understand that yes, it’s not just having an account with Sofri, they cherish the relationship. The Sofri Bank account holders see themselves as part of this family. We take feedback from them on areas we need to improve. We made our platform very interactive.
What is the spread of the (promo) customer participation because when it comes to financial inclusion, most times, rural dwellers are not adequately covered?
The spread of this promo is nationwide (from every location in Nigeria). We’ve seen customers calling us from the Southern part of Nigeria and from the Northern part. It is exciting. Sofri brand, our vision is to see that we can grow from Nigeria to other Sub-Saharan African countries. So, we’re not restricting ourselves to just Lagos.
The promo is open to everyone in Nigeria. Our push, like you said, is to see that we take care of the unbanked.
That is why we’ve made our process so simple. We leverage innovative technology to see that we get more people into the Sofri Bank ecosystem irrespective of where they are. Our customer acquisition has been top notch. Sofri Bank’s customer base has grown to around 60,000 in less than a year. The transfer success rate on the app is around 99%.
