The Managing Director of Rokel Commercial Bank, Dr. Walton Gilpin, has, in his end of year’s message to shareholders, staff and customers of the bank, revealed that the bank netted a 52 billion leones profit (after tax) in 2017 – making the bank the second most profitable in Sierra Leone last year.
This revelation has discredited an erroneous claim by a certain opposition Member of Parliament that the Bank has not made profit. It is still not clear why the said Member of Parliament failed to crosscheck his facts but decided to amplify such patent falsehood against a Sierra Leonean bank that has undergone significant reforms.
Documents, available to this writer, show the bank reverted to profitability after it was recapitalized to solve its capital adequacy problems and a new Managing Director appointed in 2017. The Bank’s profitability trajectory shows that in 2015, it netted a Le1.03 billion profit and this increased to Le1.5 billion in 2016. Recording a Le53 billion profit after tax in 2017 was no mean feat by a bank that was brazenly exploited and decapitalized by individuals with a proclivity for byzantine shenanigans. Therefore, the negative assertion by an opposition MP about the bank’s profitability was not only fantastically baseless, erroneous and corrosive, it also smirks of a sinister motive to mislead and create mischief among the hardworking staff and management of the bank.
Rokel Commercial Bank began a restructuring programme mid last year, after the appointment of a new Managing Director, Dr. Ekundayo Walton Gilpin. This came at the back of a burning desire by the government of Sierra Leone (as prudential shareholder) to recapitalize the bank and put it on a positive growth trajectory.
Ekundayoh Gilpin, in his New Year’s message, has catalogued the impressive contribution of his management team towards meeting an ambitious restructuring plan that has unwittingly amplified the renewed vigor on which the bank stands to streamline its activities.
The establishment of a marketing department, with a robust marketing strategy, has increased customer confidence, and this, according to the MD, can also not be unconnected to a paradigm shift in the overall operations and performance of each and every member of the bank.
Apparently, the Bank’s IT infrastructure was upgraded to match growing market demands. Rokel Commercial Bank can equally boast of new products and services like the innovative “Keke Account,” which has already hit a strong fan base not only among tricycle owners but ordinary middle-income businesses.
The rolling out of the revolutionary mobile banking software, ROKEL SIMKORPOR, has seen Sierra Leoneans in remote places like Bonthe Island accessing banking services – and for the first time in fifty years, government workers on that Island were paid their monthly salaries in September this year. This has removed from Islanders the burden of expensive and hazardous travels to district capitals for banking services.
The Simkorpor mobile application is literally a bank in your hands with user friendly but highly securitized protocols. The product has provided jobs for hundreds of citizens recruited and trained as agents in different parts of the country. Arguably, the bank has earned bragging rights as Champions for Financial Inclusion in Sierra Leone. The grand finale of a national debating competition on financial literacy, held in Freetown, had climaxed the bank’s drive to promote a financial literacy campaign launched by the bank of Sierra Leone last year.
Dr. Ekundayoh Gilpin, in his New Year’s Message, sounded quite optimistic about the year ahead and assured all that, “Under the New Direction, the Rokel Commercial Bank shall continue on the bright path it had chosen and we cannot afford to throw away the opportunities that have come in the form of public and political goodwill.”
On the bank of over seven awards (as Bank of the Year, Financial Institution of the Year and CEO of the Year) from very credible local and international organizations, it is easy to see why every Sierra Leonean must remain proud of Rokel Commercial Bank – their very own bank.