LAPO MFB Restates Commitment to Sustainable Finance

Nume Ekeghe
LAPO Microfinance Bank Limited has said it is championing the course of sustainable finance in the banking industry.
As a result of this, the bank has restated its commitment to supporting sustainability financing in the country.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, LAPO Godwin Ehigiamusoe, said this at the Lapo Microfinance Bank, sustainability finance conference, held in Lagos, recently.

He said the conference with the theme, ‘Enhancing Sustainable Finance in the Microfinance Subsector,’ was basically to promote the practice of sustainable finance and banking values especially among microfinance banks.

Ehigiamusoe said: “Microfinance industry is growing, having a large number of institutions and also considering the nature of their clients who are obviously active on the environment, I feel there is need for microfinance banks to adopt some of these principles as LAPO has done for the past six years.”

He said the bank has achieved paperless transactions in all its board meetings, management meetings, review meetings and has also decided to track the numbers of paper that would have been used, put naira and kobo and discovered it has been able to save millions of naira in doing that.

“Because we are tracking, we have been able to ascertain how much we are saving on monthly basis especially if we put in the cost of digital devices, we still make some profit.
“The second thing is that if you also look at the social dimension, supporting the people you do business with; for instance, LAPO has priority in recruitment of children of our customers,” he said.

On his part, Executive Director, Global Alliance for banking on values (GABV) Mr. Marcos Eguiguren, said, “I think it is a great milestone for Nigeria to have a bank such as LAPO organising a conference on sustainable finance especially with a focus on microfinance industry that is why we are supporting this.

“The role of our alliance is to support all actions in the world that are promoting sustainable finance and more for the economy.”