BoI ex-MD, Olaoluwa bags award

In recognition of his contributions towards driving government’s industrialisation agenda while at the Development Finance Institution (DFI), a former Managing Director of the Bank of Industry (BoI), Rasheed Olaoluwa, has been adjudged Leadership Newspaper’s Banker of the year for the year 2015.

According to the institution, the former BoI helmsman, who was appointed in May 2014, wasted no time in developing a five-year Strategic Plan 2015-2019 which led to the transformation of the Bank.

Indeed, Olaoluwa has over 29 years’ experience in banking and financial services sector playing different critical roles at reputable institutions such as KPMG, GTBank, Ecobank and UBA before his appointment as Managing Director/CEO of BoI.

He holds a first class honours degree in Civil Engineering, professional membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and an Executive MBA from International Graduate School of Management (IESE), Spain.

Under his watch, the industry units were restructured to align with the key sectors of Nigeria’s comparative advantage (Agro-Processing, Solid Minerals, Gas & Petrochemicals, and Light Manufacturing) under the Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP), while over N77 billion was approved and disbursed to companies I n these real sectors in 2015.

“Olaoluwa developed a new system for efficient loan monitoring and embarked on aggressive loan recovery activities. The results were outstanding. The Bank’s Non-Performing Loans (NPL) ratio reduced dramatically from 18% in May 2014 to 4% in December 2015, below CBN’s 5% guidance.

“During his stint at the Bank of Industry, the Bank’s operations and credit process were also automated with the introduction of an Online Loan Application Portal and a Work Flow System for credit approvals. This reduced the credit turnaround time from 6-12 months to less than 3 months.

“Perhaps his greatest impact was in the programmes he created for Nigeria’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The Bank accredited 200 Business Development Service Providers (BDSPs) nationwide, to provide support (business plans, loan applications, etc.) to SMEs. Forty (40) different SME clusters identified across the country and loan products were designed for each cluster.