Kennedy Uzoka is Nigeria’s coolest bank CEO

Kennedy Uzoka, UBA’s Group Managing Director, is the savviest bank CEO in Nigeria, as far as social media is concerned. Or so says an informal study by me.

He loves social media and practically hangs out there. While he won’t be allowed into the YMCA, he probably knows a thing or two about where and how to appeal to banking’s emerging core customers, Millennials. Based on the outcome of my, perhaps, dubious analysis, I decided to crown him a social media kingpin. He won’t be getting any plaque or prize money or anything. I don’t even know if he’s going to brag about it.

Recently, Herbert Wigwe, CEO of Access Bank was crowned the Twitter Lord by Business Day but as a tree doesn’t make a Zambisa forest, so also Twitter isn’t enough to rule the social media world. But then, that may be wrong, after all, Trump will rule America and the rest of the free world using nothing but Twitter.

So here’s how the CEOs stack up.

Nigerian banks will forever jostle for the eyeballs and minds of Millennials. I mean, social media was hot, digital banking is even an inferno now. It doesn’t take a soothsayer to know why; Millennials are the next target market as baby boomers start to die off gradually. Millennials live in the social media world, so no better place to hang out with them, pander to their whims, and hopefully, find a way to make some money off them.

In five years, Millennials, also known as Gen Y or those born in the ’80s and ’90s, will form the majority of the workforce. That means salaries, bonuses, shopping, car loans, mortgages, credit cards, DSTV, Netflix, chills, etc.
Unfortunately for banks in general and Nigerian banks, in particular, it has been mostly misses and few hits. At first glance, you wonder why because worldwide, 11 Nigerian banks are in the top 100 banks using social media. But we all know that you can’t run faster than the boss (let someone shout Hallelujah to that!).

So I wanted to know if the bosses are running in tandem with Millennials. After all, wouldn’t it be a strategic failure not to understand the life and time of the age cohort of those who would be banks’ greatest customers in the next few years?

Do the CEOs lead their banks by example? Do they even, on a personal level, understand social media, the platform on which the next generation of banking wars would be fought? If they lose out on Millennials, how do they plan to run their retail banking game?

Having little to do over the holidays, the devil in me played with some data and ranked Nigeria banking CEOs. Luckily, I’m out of banking else I could have found my sorry backside out of a job.

Methodology

1. There are bajillion social media platforms out there and even the craziest of us all can’t keep up with the madness. So I look at the presence on just Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Having a profile on each gives a score of 5 or 0.
2. Anyone can be on social media, being active is the real deal. So engagement is critical. Having an activity within the last 1 month gets 5 marks, the last 3 months gets 3 marks and nothing in 6 months gets 0
3. Many CEOs got there in the last few years, but it doesn’t take minutes to update profiles. Having a current profile gets a score of 5 and none gets 0.

You can download the original data here.

Note

This report isn’t a real scientific study but a random ranting from an armchair boffin. So take whatever you’ve read with a pinch of salt. Don’t ever ever ever use it as a reference for your school assignment. Be warned!