By Chinwendu Obienyi
The Board and Management of Access Holdings Plc has assured its shareholders that it would improve on reducing fines paid to regulators, reducing unclaimed dividends and its financial performance in the next financial year.
The Group Chief Executive Officer, Access Holdings Plc, Herbert Wigwe, made this known to shareholders during its Annual General Meeting which held in Lagos Wednesday.
The shareholders at the meeting expressed their concerns towards the degree of fines, contraventions and premiums paid to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) by several banks in the country.
Chairman, Independent Shareholders Association of Nigeria (ISAN), Sir Sunny Nwosu, had said, “These three agencies have taken an outrageous amount from banks, most especially AMCON. They (AMCON) have outlived their usefulness because this is not helping our plea for more dividends”.
Responding, Wigwe said, “We are suffering more than other banks as regards AMCON and NDIC premium but we have taken a strategic position that we will not stop growing. The way to reduce these fines is to reduce your balance sheet and we believe that one day in time, there could be a change in reduction in AMCON or NDIC premium.
Whenever that happens or when there is a change in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s policy and the amount of money kept in Differentiated Cash Reserves Requirements (DCRR), any interest paid will basically show huge sums of money coming to our profit and loss accounts”.
