Exclusive Trusted Magazine Q&A with Henri-Claude Oyima, Chief Executive Officer @ BGFIBank
What are the main changes you have noticed in 2020 that will have an impact on your activities in 2021?
Every five years, BGFIBank Group embarks on a new challenge through a major corporate project, which is the driving force behind all our strategic initiatives. 2020 marked the end of our EXCELLENCE 2020 corporate project, and consequently the launch of our new strategic roadmap, DYNAMIQUE 2025, which will guide us for the next 5 years, through its 5 pillars: strengthening the Group's Governance, transforming Human Capital, guaranteeing Resources, controlling Risks and ensuring Development.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has also impacted the way we work, with changes that will be felt in 2021 and beyond. Despite the distance imposed, we have never been as close as we are now. Our work organization is much more agile, much more participative, and the link between the Group's head company and its subsidiaries has been greatly strengthened.
Finally, in 2020, we realized that the Group's major projects, particularly in terms of real estate investments, are fundamentally transforming our employees. In Libreville, Gabon alone, we have undertaken the construction of three new buildings to house the headquarters of our companies. These new facilities improve the working conditions of our employees, who are gaining in confidence and performance. We do not intend to stop there, because after Congo and Gabon, we have begun studies for the construction of the headquarters of our subsidiaries in Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire and Equatorial Guinea.
How will BGFIBank Group articulate its positioning and competitive advantage in 2021?
We are following the strategic directions set out in our DYNAMIQUE 2025 business plan, which now defines four distinct business lines for the BGFIBank Group: Corporate Banking, which is designed to provide financing for companies and for structuring projects; Commercial Banking, which enables us to diversify our support and reach all audiences; Private Banking and Asset Management, because we remain convinced that African assets must be managed in Africa; and finally, Specialized Financial Services and Insurance, which are dedicated in particular to providing additional support to SMEs. We have also defined four major growth areas in which we want to develop all of the bank's complementary businesses and processes, namely insurance, investment banking, corporate finance and, of course, microfinance.
What are BGFIBank Group's main priorities in 2021?
Our priorities are clearly defined in our DYNAMIQUE 2025 corporate project. There are 25 of them, grouped under the 5 strategic pillars. 2021 is the first year of our corporate project, which is why it is fundamental that BGFIBank Group remains faithful to the priorities decided upon and firmly anchors the strategic orientations, in order to ensure the effectiveness of DYNAMIQUE 2025 over the next 5 years.
To ensure this and because the year 2021 is eminently decisive, BGFIBank Group has decided to set up a steering room in charge of monitoring, measuring and permanently controlling the performance indicators of all 25 strategic priorities of DYNAMIQUE 2025.
In your opinion, what are the key innovations that will change the game for the financial sector in 2021?
Today, digitalization has become a slogan, but for BGFIBank Group, it has already been a reality for several years. We want to ensure that the businesses we have chosen to develop are the most efficient. To do so, it is essential that our processes be alert and flexible in order to maximize our performance and therefore the profitability of the products made available to our clients.
At BGFIBank Group, we preach excellence, which is our ideal. We are obliged to put in place mechanisms to show that our system is viable and efficient, and this is achieved through certifications. Recently, BGFIBank DRC received the AML 30,000® Certification. This makes us the first bank in the DRC and the first bank in sub-Saharan Africa to receive this certification, which is a mark of recognition of the effectiveness of our system in terms of controlling and fighting money laundering and the financing of terrorism. From now on, our objective is to enrich all the Group's subsidiaries with this AML 30 000® operating mode, in terms of organization, level of control and incident management. This certification is in addition to ISO 9001 version 2015 for service quality, ISO 14 001, ISO 45 001 and PCI-DSS for payment card security. In 2021, BGFIBank Group's excellence will be illustrated by its compliance with all the international standards in force.
