From Left: National Bank Chairman Mohammed Hassan, Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury, Henry Rotich, and National Bank Managing Director, Munir Ahmed, toast to the bank’s new logo. National Bank unveiled its new brand on Friday at KICC/COURTESY
Unveiling the new look, NBK Managing Director Munir Ahmed said that the bank is seeking to grow turnover from Sh8 billion in 2012 to Sh31 billion by 2017 and become a diversified commercial bank with balanced corporate and retail businesses.
“Through this transformation strategy, we want to regain NBK’s glory and propel it back to the top tier banks by growing our balance sheet, expanding our market footprint, managing risks and streamlining costs,” Ahmed said.
The bank has over the years relied mainly on business from government institutions and a strong retail focus.
But going forward, Ahmed said, the bank will aggressively strengthen its play in the Corporate and Institutional and Small-and-Medium Enterprise (SME) segments.
NBK plans to open 30 new branches by 2017 and boost its agency banking network to 2,000 agents.
To fund growth as envisaged in the 5-year transformation plan, National Bank will be seeking to raise more than Sh10 billion in additional capital through a Rights Issue in the first quarter of 2014.
The proceeds from the cash call will go towards beefing up the capital base to support the ambitious balance sheet growth and to invest in revamping and expanding its infrastructure.
National Bank also has plans to expand into the East African region by launching operations in South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania and Somalia.
To signal its commitment in breaking with the past, the bank has unveiled a new logo, adopting yellow and brown colours as opposed to the green hue its brand had long been associated with.
“This is a new beginning for us. We are not only changing our look but also the way we do things by instilling a culture change across the organization to focus on customer requirements and deliver world class service. As part of this rebranding exercise we will revamp our retail outlets’ look and feel which will lends itself to more efficient service delivery,” Ahmed said.
