Another Bank

Another bank? Yes, another one. This you must read in regard to Barclays. In the last one year or so we have been bombarded with banks KCB, Global Trust, Fina Bank, UBA, Equity Bank, Ecobank and the latest addition to the pack, Bank PHB who’ve bought out Orient Bank.

Now, many Ugandans, I inclusive wonder why the Ugandan market is so aggressively being pursued by foreign banks especially the Nigerians. What do they know that they’re not telling us? In all of their interviews, these banks’ top officials say they see immense potential in Uganda and the East African region as a whole. If they were American, we would say they are on their quest for world domination! But they are our Naija and Kenyan brothers so let’s wait and see.

I have heard and I don’t remember who from exactly that they are mainly targeting oil wealth. It is said that they believe that in 5 years, the oil dollars / shillings will be flowing on the streets of Kampala. The reasoning behind the influx now is that if you already have an account with a given bank for 5 years or more, you are most likely to transact all your business through that bank, right? If such is the case then they really are more hopeful than some of us but still, I wonder, what do they know that we don’t?

So what exactly are they offering? I believe KCB had its niche with the Kenyans especially students of Kenyan origin in Ugandan institutions of learning. They also hit it big with the business community as many have dealings in Mombasa and Southern Sudan where the bank has branches. And then there was the Safaricom IPO, the bank actually offered people loans to buy shares so in they went running.

UBA’s premier offering was its freedom account, free banking they said. Free, that’s the catch phrase we Ugandans like to hear. What they were referring to was that for this particular account, there is no minimum opening balance, no monthly charges, etc. In short, if you deposit, 50,000 today then you’d still have the same account balance in 6 months, that’s if you didn’t withdraw or deposit more. Very welcome for people like myself who are completely convinced that the bank is committing robbery especially whenever I walk out of the ATM.

As for Equity and Fina Bank, I believe they have their niche in the SMEs and low income earners but they haven’t really said anything, thus we wait. Global trust, Ecobank we’ll just have to wait and see, right?

Ecobank had its official launch on 19th February 2009. Which Ecobank? Is it the same one that we saw on Big Brother and on Africa Magic, you ask? Yes, the very same one. Well, the official launch went past everyone who was watching, waiting. This was simply because of how it was done. The bank’s management decided to have a cocktail party at Serena hotel.

If you didn’t hear about it, well, perhaps that’s because it was not really a public launch (strictly by invite), the only public presence we could see were white Ecobank balloons tied using ribbons to shrubs on some of the city’s roundabouts. And you were lucky if you saw them because as the day went on, I believe most of them had succumbed to the wind such that by the time we were heading back home, there was one solitary one floating around the round about. Seeing this, my friend commented that it looked like it had fallen off the truck they were using to deliver them to a certain venue.