Elumelu Reveals ‘5 Secrets’ Behind UBA Group’s Growth

Group chairman of United Bank for Africa (UBA), Tony Elumelu, has revealed five priorities responsible for growing and scaling UBA Group.

Elumelu, who made the revelation on his verified Facebook page on Wednesday, said he was recently interviewed by the Positive Leadership Podcast hosted by the Executive Vice President and President, National Transformation Partnerships, Microsoft Corporation, Jean-Philippe Courtois, wherein he spoke on various pertinent topics – entrepreneurship, business, and his principles in life.

“Here are excerpts on things we prioritised in our journey to growing and scaling UBA Group,” Elumelu wrote.

He identified the priorities as Leadership, Purpose, Leveraging Technology, People, and Process as the five secrets behind UBA Group’s growth.

“1. Leadership – We shared a vision of what we wanted to accomplish, we set milestones, timeframes and put in place the building blocks that would lead to that success. These helped us to get there.

“2. Purpose – We defined it broadly; we want to democratise access to financial services and everyone in the organisation knew what we wanted to achieve, and we all worked towards that. We shared our aspirations with our stakeholders, so they held us accountable, and we also shared it internally, so everyone was in sync and mobilised.

“3. Leveraging technology – Of course, we realised that all of these, especially democratising access to banking in Africa at the time was difficult and couldn’t be done manually, so we had to leverage technology. It was so critical in our drive.

“4. People – We assembled the right people and mobilised all. We trained our people, and we shared a common vision, all of us. We motivated our people, we rewarded our people, we sanctioned when necessary, and collectively we made it.

“5. Process – Putting the right processes in place, institutionalising them, and ensuring everyonefollowed them. From technology, operations, and people,” Elumelu highlighted.

LEADERSHIP reports that UBA Group has presence in 20 African countries as well as the UK, France, and the UAE and it’s the only sub-Saharan African bank with an operational banking licence in the USA. The multinational pan-African financial services group is headquartered in Lagos and known as Africa’s Global Bank.