In a move to aid Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) ease of doing business through digital presence, Diamond Bank Plc, one of Nigeria’s fastest growing retail bank, has partnered with Facebook, an American online social media and social networking service company.
The commercial bank is partnering with the social media network in order to train over 20,000 SMEs in Nigeria. With the over two billion people on Facebook, the training would enable participants to showcase their products, as well as, get links that will take their businesses far and wide.
The Bank’s Head of Regional Businesses South, Nkem Okoro, said the bank is leveraging on technology to boost SME businesses. The idea behind the partnership, according to Okoro, is to give Diamond Bank’s SME customers the platform to merge their business with their Facebook accounts.
The training is being anchored by SheLeads Africa, a representative of Facebook.
Diamond Bank’s head of Emerging Businesses (SME Banking), Ayodele Olojede also said
“What we are doing today is to create online visibility and teach them how to monetise that visibility. Just by being on Facebook, you can increase your sales by over 33 percent and a lot of women are not aware of this. Facebook is already a market for 26 million Nigerians and yet business owners are not aware. So, if you are not online, you are missing the opportunity to be able to scale up your businesses. That is the reason for this training.”
The bank had released its Results for the half year ended June 2018, showing gross earnings increased from ₦97.9 billion in 2017 to ₦98.5 billion in 2018.
However, profit before tax was ₦2.9 billion for the period ended June 2018, a 69% decrease compared to a profit of ₦9.5 billion reported for the period ended June 2017.
The company’s profit after tax also dipped to ₦1.80 billion in 2018, a 78% decrease compared to a profit of ₦8.02 billion recorded in H1 2017.
Diamond Bank was trading at N1.23 as at the last trading session on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
