Stakeholders in the financial institutions have expressed optimism in the development of retail banking as a catalyst to the growth of the economy.
 
According to them, modern technology avails retail banking customers the opportunity of catapulting their businesses with increased speed, quality and convenience.
 
At the maiden edition of Nigerian Retail Banking workshop, organised by Ciuci Consulting, titled: “Planning for tomorrow’s retail banking customers”, at the weekend, the stakeholders noted that for retail banks to see how profitable their customers are, the rate of adoption and customer preference for using a general banking product internet-based platform is essential.
 
The Group Head, Retail Banking, Firstbank of Nigeria, Funke Smith, said with the recent emphasis by the Federal Government to encourage “Made in Nigeria” products, it is pertinent to promote retail banking by supporting the Small and Medium Scale Entreprises (SMEs) with enabling facilities to thrive.
  
Smith said for us to encourage local products, the government specifically needs to ensure that there is an enabling environment and infrastructure for businesses to survive, saying “all that needs to be fixed so that goods actually can be moved up and down.
 
She stated that retail banking is growing and will continue to grow; it is been holding and sustaining the economy and it will continue to grow forward.
 
“For a bank to support an SME, the bank would need to see and understand its cash flow, we need to see separate individual books,” she said.
  
Chief Operations and Information Officer, Fidelity Bank, Gbolahan Joshua, said with a lot of technology being enabled, it can only get better and shows the opportunity in the retail space.

For him, the attraction for customers is that they don’t need to have internet on their phone to carry out transaction, showing a need for innovation in retail space.
 
His words: “In retail, what you need to determine is, what is important to the customer, what are they saying and doing. From the transaction pattern, you can know what they are doing. It has to be technology led retail.
 
In his remarks, the Managing Partner, Ciuci Consulting and Director-General of Delta Economic Summit Group (DESG), Chukwuka Monye, said the workshop was important to create a platform or forum for stakeholders to come together and discuss issues pertaining to retail banking.    
 
“From our interaction within customers under the retail banking, different players in the industries have different perspectives about different issues and that is not healthy in an industry where you should at least see a little bit of collaboration,” he said.
 
According to him, commercial banks are going to change a lot of their models. It has taken them time to where they are now but it takes a lot for you to organise yourself to serve consumers.

He explained that it is not the same configuration that is required to serve corporate or commercial customer, stating that banks would change the way they are organised. They would also change the kind of people that they recruit.
 
“To think retail is very different from thinking corporate. You need to have the capability to serve retail customers. I see a lot of changes in the way people are organised,” he said.