BoI meets new CBN requirement for DFI licence

The Bank of Industry (BoI) has demonstrated its commitment to providing uninterrupted support to the industrialisation programme of the country by speedily fulfilling all requirements recently demanded by the Central Bank of Nigeria from all Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) in the country to qualify for a new licence from the apex bank.
A statement from BoI explained that the CBN has approved its application for the issuance of the required license, in line with the CBN guidelines that “all existing DFIs whether established directly by an Act of the National Assembly, incorporated under Companies and
Allied Matters Act (CAMA) or any other law shall be required to obtain license from the CBN.”
Similarly, the bank noted that as part of its plans to drive industrialisation in the country, it has embarked on strategic and tactical initiatives to reposition its operations.
“BoI wishes to reiterate our readiness to continue to provide financial support to SMEs and Large Enterprises with good business propositions. The Bank will also continue to provide business support and capacity building for SMEs.
“We have in recent times taken bold steps, both strategic and tactical, to reposition the Bank among which are the formulation of Strategic Plan 2015-2019; institutionalization of corporate governance structures; implementation of enterprise wide risk management and
compliance systems; and introduction of mobile and digital platforms for interfacing with Nigerian SMEs, thus improving our efficiency.
“We have also Introduced cluster specific SME products for Agro-processing, Nollywood, Fashion business, and others; we also expanded our branch network from seven to 14 offices to bring our services closers to our customers; our operations have also been certified as we recently secured the ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management Systems (QMS) Certification as well as secured good credit ratings from Agusto & Co (A-) and Fitch Ratings (BB-).
“Our ongoing SME Cluster development initiative will ensure that all credible SMEs in Nigeria can feel the impact of BOI in due course”, the statement read in part.