Adedeji Olowe

Nigerian Banking Career for Dummies

I’ve been in banking all my career, that’s if I don’t count the two months I was jobless between NYSC and my first proper job. I don’t know if this is an unfortunate experience as some people swear by heavens that banking is the worst job on earth.

It’s not! Don’t mind bad belle people!
The Nigerian economy isn’t that developed so banking is one of those rare jobs that could bring in some decent paycheck. Yahoo tops the list followed by oil and gas. Our venerable old banking comes a distant third.

If you are going to start life as a banker though, there are some things you need to understand.

Banking is built on hard, cold numbers and bankers count beans so take special care to note that there ain’t no free food in Freetown.
If you don’t have the guts to tackle the impossible, don’t bother to apply.
Banking is a warzone; nobody takes prisoners.

Everyone screams about long hours, targets and what women do to survive banking.

While I know targets are as sure as rain or taxes however what women do is what women do and it’s nothing to do with banking. Most of my successful female colleagues (past and present) got where they are from hard work, grit and mental chops. If any of them did a customer, they would have done the customer if they weren’t bankers anyway.

Interviewing for a bank role
Don’t beat me up on this, but the average banker is fairly intelligent so when coming for the job, bring your brain along. Life throws all sorts at bankers so expect the most unimaginable issues to be sorted out for your customers.

Life is generally hard, I don’t fathom why some people could think banks are day care services.

While at it, learn to love the unlovable. In banking, the customer is always right and your opinion doesn’t count when they are angry. If you know you have short temper, don’t be a banker as your days may be numbered less than the count of toes of an ostrich.

One of the things an average Joe doesn’t understand is the grade level system in banking. Unlike other industries, grades in banking are separate and distinct from functional roles. Not knowing this can be very disadvantageous especially when crossing from a non-banking industry. The shock and disappointment will be crushing and demotivating! So please pay attention to what I want to say!

There is formula to the madness.
The professional grade system is similar across banks, with few variations. Grades at senior management, from Assistant General Manager and above, is regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria. So welcome to banking and prepare to move up levels:

Executive Trainee (ET)
Assistant Banking Officer (ABO)
Banking Officer (BO)
Senior Banking Officer (SBO)
Assistant Manager (AM)
Deputy Manager (DM)
Manager (MGR)
Senior Manager (SM)
Assistant General Manager (AGM)
Deputy General Manager (DGM)
General Manager (GM)
Executive Director (ED)
Deputy Managing Director (DMD)
Managing Director (Oga at the top)

Additional information you should pay attention to:

Some have a grade before Executive Trainee usually called Graduate Trainee or any other fancy designation but you are not an ET
Others have a grade between Executive Trainee and Assistant Banking Officer
There could be a grade between Senior Banking Officer and Assistant Manager
Certain banks have two levels for Assistant Managers
About 4 banks have Principal Manager level between Senior Manager and Assistant General Manager grades. Look before you leap!
CBN doesn’t permit any level between General Manager and Executive Director anymore. Those who have been lucky to land there are grandfathered in
Quite a few banks don’t have Deputy Managing Directors
Most banks give official cars from Manager grade with just one or two throwing in a personal driver as well. Talk of living the life!

In terms of moving up the ladder, a smart and lucky dude gets promoted every 2 years but usually runs out of luck once he gets around the middle management grade. Let’s say he doesn’t, he would still spend at least 20 years before he becomes a General Manager.

The good old days have gone!
Banks hardly demote and I haven’t seen any before but if your bank gets acquired, you should start adjusting your lifestyle.

So, you may ask, how do people get to where they are if it would take a zillion years to move from grade to grade? Well, bankers are sometimes called prostitutes, figuratively I mean. We tend to jump from bank to bank, picking up experiences, grades and hoping not to move from frying pan to microwave oven.

Long ago when there were many banks, people routinely got promotions once a year and some few unicorns got double a year. I recall when I started my banking career, I knew of guys who got to be AGMs before they turned 30 and at least two EDs who got appointed from AGMs. Those days have gone, probably never to come around anymore.

These days, most Assistant Banking Officers are between the ages of 30 and 35. Back in the late 90s, most CEOs were in the same age brackets. I guess the barrier is higher and people are bigger chickens, myself inclusive.
In conclusion, I could say I have had a good time in banking, absolutely no regrets.

Maybe it’s because I have never experienced life in other industries. I’m lucky to still stay in touch with my core love – Engineering so I hope by the time I get tired of banking or banking gets tired of me, I can find something else to tickle my fancy.

Drop a comment if you have other specific information about banking careers and I would be glad to respond within limits of what I know and without letting out official and confidential information.

Is Postgraduate Education of Benefit in Nigeria?

“Why would you offer me, a Banking Officer, the same grade that I was before I went to school, despite my Masters from the University of Liverpool?”

I looked at the dude like he just fell out of the sky and gate-crashed into a nudist camp. I swore under my breath; what the heck?

“Dude, that’s the best we can do for this role. Based on policy and work load, this function can only be for, at the highest, a Banking Officer”.

That exchange happened some years ago with some younger colleague who wanted to get back on my team. That same scene has played over a zillion times across a billion hiring offices nationwide.

He grudgingly took the job but he hated me (he was always giving me side eye) for it.

Before you label me the evil boss, probably jealous of the guy’s achievements, hear me out.

The quest for higher education is an insatiable itch for a lot of Nigerians and when our universities went tits-up, we started hustling for foreign degrees. I reckon it’s as itchy as being broody, if you get what I mean.

After 6 agonizing years studying Electrical Engineering, at which I thoroughly sucked, I left school and promised never go to back again. University for me was boring, horrible and we lived in terrible conditions. In those days there weren’t private universities so you either went abroad (only few did as the economy was, em, no comments) or go for top notch Federal Universities.
If you are going to eat toads, go for the ones with eggs.

But just after a few months, I started dreaming of Masters and PhD. I tried to do some bits at UNILAG, but they were arrogant and uncoordinated. Considering I like to be the only arrogant person in the room, I couldn’t stick that. In fact to add insult to injury, I was asked to do 1 year of postgraduate diploma before I could enroll for a Masters in Information Technology. Àrífín!

Lumbering along in my career, I saw so many people, with crushed expectations and broken hearts, who had spent many years earning high quality Masters at top notch schools, being asked to take the same levels or sometimes something less than they earned before they went for higher education. I asked myself – is it worth it?

In the defense of the employers, the lack of regards doesn’t come from inferiority complex (as some have been accused) or lack of understanding (that’s also an accusation) but from asking a simple question – how does your Masters/PhD give you an advantage in delivering superior results in the specific roles than the gorímápás that didn’t bother leaving their desks? Employers pay for output not for robes and mortal boards.

This annoyance was most prevalent in banking but also happened in Telecoms, FMCG, general Commerce, etc.

My itch for higher education didn’t disappear but I advised myself with wisdom – go when you are newly promoted and senior enough to manage the slowdown.

I finally summoned courage to do my Masters at a ripe old age (I was the oldest in my class) but foolishly chose a tough brain-cell killing Masters in Engineering. It almost turned to the worst mistake of my life but after boasting to my colleagues that I wasn’t going to come back to Nigeria if I didn’t knock out a distinction, I read so hard my eyes fell out.

But then I still paid dearly for it. I ended up spending almost 5 years on a single grade. Do I have regrets about the Masters? Absolutely NOT! Do I have regrets about hanging around like an aborigine on a single grade? Absolutely YES! Could I have done it a bit better? YES!

By the way, not all schools are born equal. I know alumni of Ivy League Colleges and other expensive schools fare better. But then truth be told, many of them already have the advantage, connections, money, bla bla, to land the good careers in the first place and the schools are just an extension of the exclusive clubs they belong to.

If you like, you can count this as the rant of a sore loser.
After all is said and done, I have come to the following conclusions:

There is nothing better than education.
Higher education may not do much for your career unless it’s very highly specialized. For example, if you are going to work in fancy UN style organizations, a PhD is a must.
MBAs are too generic. If you must get one, go to a top-notch school. Start saving now.
Go to school when your career has become stable and you have established credibility.
Nobody trusts your MBA when you have never worked before. It’s like calling yourself a military General just after NDA – either you are a joker or a clown.
Nothing substitutes for a good school. It’s foolish looking for a cheap school just for the sake of higher education.
Long distance learning is WAY HARDER than being in class! If you see anyone go through it, respect them.

I guess my opinions may be wrong or maybe my experiences are different from yours. If you have had similar or diverse experiences on this, kindly share below.

Base64 in Microsoft SQL

Base64 encoding is a Swiss Army knife function for every programmer but somehow not readily available in Microsoft SQL Server. Or that’s what everyone thinks.

Apparently it has been hiding in MS SQL since 2005 release. So recently while searching for a working solution, I found a something workable at this blog post and then used that to create two SQL user defined functions.

Use freely but attribute.
CREATE function [dbo].[base64encode] (@input varchar(max) ) returns varchar(max) begin declare @source varbinary(max) set @source = convert(varbinary(max), @input) return cast('' as xml).value('xs:base64Binary(sql:variable("@source"))', 'varchar(max)') end GO
CREATE function [dbo].[base64decode] (@input varchar(max) )
returns varchar(max) begin return cast('' as xml).value('xs:base64Binary(sql:variable("@input"))', 'varbinary(max)') end GO

If you value me, you will know my name

A simple email addressed ‘Dear Valued Customer’ can ruin a day. Names matter; they’re personal. With technology, there’s no excuse for impersonal communication. It’s a sign of disregard and laziness.

I had a pretty hard day recently and topping the cherry of my nasty ice-cream was a mail from a bank and it went “Dear Valued Customer”.

I smashed something.

Backtrack to some 3 decades ago. I remember how we picked chicken fights when someone made a mess of our name, especially surname. There is something so important to names that everyone has at least one; sometimes a name is only what some people have got.

If you really value me as your customer then I should be a person. It’s bad enough to be a statistic. It’s worse that you don’t even have the decency to call me by name.

With cheap and accessible technology nobody, I mean no company worthy of its salt, can say it doesn’t have access to tools to personalize services talk less of emails. So it means one thing – either the company is clueless or doesn’t give two horse legs about me.

It’s like choosing between getting shot in the forehead or on the temple. Both are bad propositions.

Why should I care about you if you don’t care about me?

I don’t know if my conclusion is grounded in science or hogwash but I strongly believe that companies that personalize greetings, emails, SMS, and other interactions would also be good in customer service. It shouldn’t be a rocket science to feel that someone who goes through that pain to make me feel special would care enough to provide a good service.

Personalizing services isn’t trivial but getting your customers back after losing them would be much more difficult.

Some customers don’t have taste.

I see it every day – people, practically everyone on two legs, take rubbish work they pay dearly for. Bad painting, poor haircut, badly sewn dresses, etc. So when they get “Dear Valued Customer” they feel no pain.

This is going to be a tough battle!

Netflix eats Cable TV's dinner

Netflix strolled into Nigeria yesterday, as well as 129 other countries. I know it’s no big deal to a lot of people but trust me, it is to some. It’s like we are finally free of certain companies holding Nigerians to ransom. No name calling please; I have home training!

Netflix is an online video/movies streaming company. They started with video rentals with a subscription model, which was innovative at that time, and captured the market with unlimited views and no late return fees. Netflix is an example of high-performance innovative company; they quickly jumped on the bandwagon of internet movies and today account for 45% of all internet traffic in the US between the hours of 6PM and 9PM. Netflix offers millions of movies at very low and simple subscription model – pay a flat fee a month and watch as many as your eye balls could endure. Cancel anytime you want and come back when you are led by the spirit.

Initially confined to US, they aggressively moved into new territories such as Europe, Brazil, etc. but yesterday, in one giant sweep, entered into 130 new territories, including Ikeja, Lekki, Abuja and Kaduna. Ok, you get the drift.
If you want to read about the history of Netflix, go here. But the founder, Reed Hastings, is a personal hero of mine. Supremely smart, simple and hey, he demystified movies for everyone. But that isn’t all, he’s a great dude to work for.

When compared to what we currently get now from cable TVs, there is even no basis for comparison. Instead of paying N17K a month to watch from maximum of two TVs, you can get 4 simultaneous screens for $11.99 per month.
No need to even record and watch again, the movies are always there. Pause on the TV and continue on your phone. You can’t ask for more.

Some things are missing though:

I want to watch live TV, such as CNN, to just listen to Donald Trump yap.
Hate it or love it, Nollywood is keeping certain companies alive in Nigeria today. Mostly crappy content but hey, they love it if not they would have stopped acting. Haters like Deji Olowe can go hug an electric pole.

I want to see Arsenal get spanked, live. OK, sports is a big deal! Who doesn’t want to watch Wimbledon or see that British boy, what’s his name again, run around in circles in formula 1 cars.

When things like this happens, there would be gainers and losers, let’s talk about them.

Gainers

My friends and millions of Nigerians that want access to good movies. I mean, crawling to the cinemas can be a dog of a chore. Buying pirated movies is too much hassles for my simple life. Imagine having access to millions of movies on demand, play, pause, rewind and just anytime I want. Series don enter wahala!
Smile, Swift and other internet providers will now have guys guzzling their bandwidth like hell. Smile will probably see an uptick in its unlimited plan because 5GB of internet is just one Netflix HD movie

Banks will discover new and stable revenue stream of customers doing international transactions without leaving Nigeria. It’s small but it’s steady. Trust me, some banks are already prepping communications to their customers about this. What do you expect?

Losers

Cable TV. I’m sorry but babes thou art overpriced! Some of my friends spend upward of 17K a month to watch what? Super crap most often than not. If you miss a video, so be it.

Pirates will discover that it’s cheaper for their customers to do Netflix than buy CDs but no chilling 🙂
Banks may face more fraud issues as the payment process for Netflix is, I’m sorry, too simple not to be abused by just anyone. Just enter your card information and that’s it. Nothing stops anyone from using a stolen card to watch few mojos for some months.