Managing Director & Director of Finance (Rokel Commercial Bank)

In your opinion, what is required for Sierra Leone to be a stronger and more stable economy in West Africa?

I believe that we have to concentrate on our strengths and our strength lies on three (3) industries; the extractive industry, agricultural industry and the hospitality industry. The hospitality industry, God has endowed Sierra Leone with beaches, mountains, climate, etc., to make it nice but what you will lack in the hospitality industry is the participation of the local people if they are not well to do, you will then have to depend on people coming into the country (tourists) and is a very difficult thing to do. This is because when you want tourists to come you will need to develop your utility structure that is water, electricity, and communication among others. We need to develop the community and we need a supporting infrastructure. Agriculture is another area that if we concentrate on we will be able to enhance the growth of the economy. We have all the elements (land, sunshine, rain) that are needed for things to grow. The commercial banks here hardly have funds that will match the sort of investment that you have to do in agriculture. In agriculture the investment has to be long term but most of the funds that we have in all the banks I can say are short-term funds. We need long-term funds for the agricultural industry and with that Sierra Leone will be stronger and the most stable economy in West Africa. The extractive industry of course you know that was why Sierra Leone was the fastest growing economy in the world. The country has all the minerals you can think of in the world. Diversification in these industries would help strengthen this country.

Ebola has been a very tragic time for this country; the country was growing fast at a 20% growth rate in 2013 both internal and external shocks have stalled the country. Do you think Sierra Leone is recovering?

Yes, the country has recovered a lot from the Ebola tragedy. You can see that now in our relationship with one another, during the Ebola we cannot sit together or me touch you for a handshake or anything even when you talk to me I will look at you and say has she or hasn’t she, so you see it was that bad but now we are so relaxed and doing all the things we stopped doing because of the Ebola. Also, the government and the private sector have the opportunity of stepping up with their activities again.

The financial sector has been strong and has always supported the economy during its growth - Can you give us an overall vision of the financial sector in Sierra Leone?

Roughly we have about thirteen (13) commercial banks but couple of years ago it was only a handful of commercial banks and for these banks because of their nature, we can only lend short term and the focus for example Rokel Commercial Bank does not have many cooperate costumers but engages on retail banking. This whole idea from the Ministry of Finance for financial inclusion is to get people walking down the street to be part of the banking system. In Europe for example, my daughter there is only 10 years old and she has a bank account but here you can see people who have been working for a number of years without a bank account.

You have to have an account before you start talking about mobile banking. The idea in Sierra Leone now, if you look at the youngsters they have android phones. So you can see that it has encouraged them to look on that side of transferring money. It started up with credit and now it is cash. So again that aspect of using the platform is helping the bank as well to reach areas that would have been difficult to reach but as long as you have a mobile phone you will be able to do a financial transaction.

80% of the economy is informal in this country: What is your opinion on financial inclusion?

Like I mentioned earlier this is government’s plan for financial inclusion. The Central Bank has these workshops and conferences about educating people. Again as one bank it is very difficult to do it but the association of commercial banks can do it easily from an initiative taken by the Central Bank, now filtering down to the association and then the individual commercial banks. We have our own strategy of encouraging people to join the bank; however, we have to be very careful in disclosing our secrets.

The perception here is that because it is such a cash society so the idea of why do I need a bank account if all I would use is cash that was the problem but that perception is changing gradually even though I will like to see the rate being far higher than it is. It is that perception, that movement from a cash society not entirely cashless but to that situation where the use of cash is reduced drastically. For example, couple of years ago we have only one or two ATM machines but now we have so many of them. So we are moving in that direction and we have suppliers like DSTV, EDSA and even the gas stations. Once we start moving in that area lots of people will see the need to have a bank account or at least a visa card and Rokel Commercial Bank is the first to issue a visa card locally in Sierra Leone. So we are moving in that direction but do not forget because of the technology platform, you need to have the infrastructure; what is the point of having an ATM machine when you do not have electricity. You cannot do it in isolation you need to have the infrastructure in order, which will require a huge investment, and the return will be over a long period of time.

Rokel Bank is one of the oldest banking institutions here in Sierra Leone. It is a public bank with Sierra Leonean shareholders and the government is involved in it. It is one of the top three banks of the country - Can you give us a bit of history about the bank and what are your current operations?

The bank is one of the oldest as it used to be Barclays Bank. Barclays had a change of policy and so they wanted to pull out so they offered shares to the public. When they were here, they had 60% shares, which they kept and offered 40% to Sierra Leoneans and later sold 51% of their shares to the government and the 9% distributed in an employee share incentive scheme. Rokel Commercial Bank came into existence and was doing well. The people were happy until the management became irresponsible giving out loans and advances without due reference to the policy and so things went bad. It went bad to an extent that the government had to recapitalise because the losses eroded the capital. The government diluted private shareholder’s percentage from 49% to 35% and the government’s shares rose to 65%, but the government in its wisdom had actually put in place a commission that was called the National Privatisation Commission. This came about because the government realised that they were not supposed to be in private companies. So this was an attempt to look at the government’s participation in all of the companies not Rokel Bank alone but where they had interest. The government is at the moment considering to pull out in their involvement in Rokel Commercial Bank, so you will have Rokel Commercial Bank in the near future having maybe a little bit of government’s participation.

I think one of the reasons for that is the lack of infrastructure. We had a stock exchange; I am talking about privatisation of the shares. The stock exchange is not vibrant so hence it becomes difficult to raise funds from these different shareholders. Rokel Commercial Bank was the only company listed in the stock exchange market. Again, an institution where we have a vibrant stock exchange then development becomes a lot faster because banks will be able to raise funds on the stock exchange. Those funds can then be used downwards on small-scale companies but here we need funds, we need to recapitalise; it’s either you go to the government which is the majority shareholder or the minority shareholder. If you go to the minority shareholder there is always going to be this problem of should we or should we not. In an institution for example where we have 2,443 shareholders of which the government is among the 2,442, how are you going to raise funds from 2000 plus so it becomes difficult. Over the couple of years we see Rokel Commercial Bank progressing. We have extended our customer base.

What is your footprint in the country? Do you cover the entire country?

We have a total of 12 branches and 5 of them are in Freetown. Just last week we were in Makeni, Kabala and Kono, and I am planning on going to Bo, Kenema, Moyamba and Pujehun. Again, within the next 2 months we will be operating in the military barracks. Even though some people are not banking with us, they depend on us to make payment for them out of the city.

It is a competitive market with 13 banks but Rokel seems to be well established. How do you differentiate yourself from this entire crowd that is disrupting the market?

I used to be the Managing Director at Union Trust bank and I look at both banks now and try to see what I did not do right there and make it right here. Also, coverage is one of our strength. Most of the Nigerian banks their concentration is only in Freetown whereas for Rokel we are all over the place. We own our buildings, Rokel Commercial bank cannot leave or decide to close down and move operations to another location or jurisdiction whereas for the others they can. We assure the people that we are here to stay and we are not going anywhere.

The government will shortly be divesting and you will require the participation of investors. How are you planning to attract investment in Rokel’s capital?

It is the decision of the 65% shareholder, it is their property and it is their primary responsibility to sell shares to the people. We have unissued shares and we are planning to ask for these shares to be issued and once these shares are issued, we will place them in the stock exchange and also talk to people who we believe are interested internationally and locally and try to see how much of that billions of shares they can take up.

Again, we have been looking for strategic investors not just investors but strategic partners, not only the experience but also the financial muscle to solve the capital side of that. In terms of liquidity we are fine; it’s just the capital side.

You have been here for almost two years as Managing Director and you have also worked for Union Trust Bank. So I would love to know out of all of this, what has been your biggest achievement since you have joined Rokel Commercial Bank?

Since I joined Rokel Commercial Bank my biggest achievement has been getting policies in place and we succeeded greatly in doing that. We were able to have the personnel operate according to policies and documents. If that was not done we would have had the same problem that the bank once had but because we adopted that we had stopped the leak in revenue, we have put in controls on expenditure, we have regulated our loans and policies to the extent that we have transformed Rokel which made a 100 billion loss in 2013 and 25 billion loss in 2014,and when we came in and finished 2015 we converted all those to a profit of 1.5 billion and we expect that after our audit for 2016 it will be even more.

How do you see Rokel Commercial Bank in 10 years?

In 10 years I see Rokel Commercial Bank taking the position as one of the finest banks in the country.

A personal message to our readership like potential investors: What would you like to tell them to come and invest in Sierra Leone?

The agricultural industry is in need of investors and it is a very lucrative industry. There are lots of other potentials here in Sierra Leone.