By Ngozi Onyeakusi — Fidelity Bank Plc yesterday sealed a deal with NIPOST.
The Deputy Managing Director Fidelity Bank, Mohammed Balarabe said the bank will provide banking services in 266 branches through the Partnership, which is aimed towards deepening financial inclusion in the country.

The DMD, who disclosed this in Abuja on Thursday at the official launch of the Agency Banking Partnership with the Nigeria Postal Services, NIPOST, said Fidelity Bank will be leveraging on the 1400 locations of NIPOST to provide banking services to many financially excluded Nigerians.

He noted that the partnership with NIPOST will lead to more development across the country through access to financial services provided by Fidelity Bank, while appealing to Nigerians to take advantage of the opportunity.

The Divisional Head, Retail Bank, Richard Madiebo had assured customers of the bank and non customers alike, to embrace the new initiative as it promises a win-win for all and would guarantee more people being captured in the financial inclusion strategy.

Madiebo said the Agency Banking Partnership was a pacesetting effort of Fidelity Bank at providing financial services at the grassroots level to all categories of small and medium enterprises.

The Post Master General of the Federation, Bisi Adegbuyi said the new initiative would give NIPOST an opportunity to offer financial services to all Nigerians through its network of locations across the country.

Adegbuyi noted that globalisation coupled with growth in e-commerce has forced many postal administrations to explore ways of expanding their frontiers through collaboration with relevant stakeholders in order to meet the emerging challenges in the communications sector.

He posited that the partnership with Fidelity BANK was part of their ways of re-engineering and reinventing NIPOST through collaborations with different stakeholders from the private and public sectors, while also leveraging on cutting edge technology to present an array of digital offerings aimed at meeting the divergent needs of their customers

Head of Digital Financial Services, Central Bank of Nigeria Steven Ambore said innovative product like the Agency Banking Partnership will help to achieve the 80 percent financial inclusion target by 2020 set by the apex bank.

He pointed out that the revised national financial inclusion strategy was designed to leverage on technology to ensure the reduction in the 36.6m Nigerians without access to financial services and was therefore impressed with what Fidelity Bank was doing with the launch of the Agency Banking Partnership.