Access Bank partners firm to support women-led businesses

Access Bank Plc, through its W Initiative, is supporting women-led businesses to access new markets.

The bank, for example, is partnering a business strategist, Nelly Agbogu, to organise the fifth Naija Brand Chick Trade Fair, which will hold between April 9 and 10, this year and is expected to receive over 20,000 visitors who will include female entrepreneurs to exhibit their products and services.

As part of the bank’s commitment, female businesses taking part in the fair would be given free training.

Access Bank has been a strong supporter of the Naija Brand Chick Trade Fair where it has served as its financial partner and sponsor of the Fair since 2019. The bank’s Group Head, Women Banking, Abiodun Olubitan, said “At Access Bank, we understand the importance of contributing to the growth of the economy by providing business yielding opportunities for women-owned businesses. We believe in the vision of today’s female entrepreneur, and we are willing to help her grow.

“Accessing new markets is one of our growth strategies and this partnership has indeed contributed to scores of women entrepreneurs expanding their profit and business portfolio through physical trade exhibitions and fairs. Through the W Initiative, women-owned businesses across Africa can now access business growth opportunities through discounted financing such as the W Power Loan and capacity building programs like the Womenpreneur Pitch-a-ton and IFC certified Mini-MBA.”

Group Head of Emerging Businesses, Ayodele Olojede, said:“Supporting MSMEs’ growth and development is a core proposition for the bank as we understand their contribution to the economy in terms of GDP and Employment. However, we also know the challenges business owners face and we have developed our proposition to alleviate the constraints.’’

Furthermore, we have also digitized this solution to ensure that we can cater to the vast majority of MSMEs. Some of these innovations include our online account opening platform for businesses, digital lending platform, Digital payment solution platform (Swiftpay), Access to market (Discounted Website), and our capacity-building programmes.

Access Bank continues to reiterate its commitment to support women and contribute to the growth of the women businesses in Nigeria.