Speaking to journalists on Friday at a cocktail reception organised by the bank for its customers at Coco Ocean, Bijilo, he said: “We have forged partnerships especially with business start-ups. Most banks would not finance new companies but for FIBank, if you look around here, there is one or two very young people that we are very proud to be associated with their businesses. The youth of this country can do a lot and have the capacity and now increasingly have the entrepreneurial spirit to get things done. The only thing they need is the financial support. It is not only to produce loans to people, it is also to be around them and make sure that these monies are used [judiciously]. If I was to talk about our success, I think our biggest success is the young people. The next state of our relationship is to help technical Gambians to go into business.
“I’m glad to welcome our customers to the reception party today. FIBank unlike most of the other Nigerian banks that are present in The Gambia, even though the majority ownership is Nigerian, is a Gambian bank. As a bank, we remain grateful to the Gambia government for giving us the licence. We are also grateful to the conducive socio-economic environment in The Gambia. Because of that socio-economic environment, we are able to use The Gambia as a springboard to the rest of Africa. In terms of our profitability, in terms of our balance sheet, we have a very big balance but we are proud that the bank is customer-focused. We are a bank that realised responsible lending or borrowing in the past ten or eleven years we have been in The Gambia and we are still grateful to most of the people that we see around here. We just want to thank all our customers and also thank our regulators. If you see FIBank going to other countries, it’s because of the confidence that they have in our regulator, the Central Bank of The Gambia.”
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