One year after launching its microfinance bank arm, Bankly has appointed Stephen Amodu as managing director and introduced a high-yield product, InvestPro. InvestPro is a savings product with 35% annual interest on the first deposit and 20% on subsequent deposits.
This means that if you have invested ₦500,000 for 6 months between October 2024 and April 2025, the ₦500,000 investment will attract an annual interest of 35%. If at any point between October 2024 and April 2025, you want to top up your investment, that additional investment will attract 20% interest per annum, and all your investments including the first and subsequent ones will mature on the same day in April. You can invest for 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year.
Launched in 2019, Bankly began as a modern approach to group/thrift savings and then became known for agency banking, with over 50,000 agents and merchants using their POS terminals across Nigeria. Today, Bankly is a lifestyle bank that provides digital savings products to businesses and individuals.
With a volatile inflation rate in Nigeria and the recent naira devaluation, investors are seeking opportunities that offer appreciable returns that closely track the MPR. Bankly’s Investpro offers substantially higher interest rates than traditional savings accounts. All deposits made on Investpro are protected by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC).
According to newly appointed MD Stephen Amodu, “We also want to use InvestPro to re-emphasise the importance of savings. The first step to building wealth is keeping something away from what you currently earn, no matter how little. Success for us with this product means more Nigerians are disciplined to save more.”
Stephen Amodu joins Bankly with over 16 years of experience in banking and finance. His experience spans stints at Union Bank, Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF), and Dot. At Bankly he is kickstarting his tenure with the launch of InvestPro. Speaking to TechCabal (TC), he tells us how he plans to lead Bankly in the coming months and why a high-return investment product is important to the finance ecosystem right now.
TC: Let us start this with your leadership style. What strategies do you use to run teams effectively?
SA: After 16+ years, I see myself as one of the lucky professionals whose career has transversed traditional institutions, fintech, and social financial institutions. I have had the privilege and responsibility of building teams from the ground up as a pioneer employee/executive and breaking down big goals, objectives, and campaigns into small daily executable chunks. It can be argued that building and motivating teams in fintechs and startups like ours is an extreme sport. You are building and managing teams with varying work preferences; onsite, offsite, hybrid, different geographies, etc. My approach revolves around ensuring we have the right people, communicating in clear terms the impact they are making in customers’ lives when they delight customers, and making visible to them the reward of solving customers’ problems.
The competition will always attempt to poach good hands, but we at Bankly continue to provide bigger opportunities to our people by giving them opportunities to solve bigger problems, allowing them to have exposure to a pool of great talents and colleagues.
TC: What would you say has been the biggest challenge managing Bankly MFB so far and how have you tackled it?
SA: I will call it Bankly opportunities, not challenges. This is because our opportunities lie in being a trusted partner in meeting customers’ short and long-term financial needs. Building products that delight our customers, distributed through reliable technology, and within what banking regulation permits.
We do all these by getting very close to our customers to know their request before they ask, and meeting their needs before they become aware. Our people (Bankly team) wake up every day, relying on data to achieve this.
TC: What growth strategies do you intend to put in place to expand Bankly’s market reach?
SA: The strategy is to grow fast, and sustainably so. The overarching objective is for our customers to be our evangelists; We want customers to be obsessed with Bankly, just as we are visibly obsessed with them. To do this, we will continually seek and leverage the right partnerships.
TC: Let’s talk about the high-yield investment product just launched. Why is InvestPro the right product for Bankly MFB to launch right now?
SA: Retail earners and savers have been the most hit by macroeconomic volatility over the last fourteen (14) months. This is Bankly’s way of saying, “If you can’t save as much, can you earn as much?”. We as a company can afford to earn ultra-low to no margin on the first lump sum investment, we will make it up on subsequent investments.
TC: What is the underlying investment strategy for InvestPro? What do you intend to do with these investments to yield returns for investors?
SA: Great question. We are in the financial intermediation business. The money will be deployed to grow our loan book. The blended interest rate could afford Bankly the opportunity to lend the deposits to businesses and entities that meet our stringent risk acceptance criteria.
TC: What security measures are in place to protect investor funds and data?
SA: We take the security of our customers’ funds and data seriously. Our deposits are also insured by the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation which provides comfort for retail investors. Besides this, our conservative risk appetite ensures we follow strict guidelines in our lending activities. This ensures we lend to only credible businesses and entities. We also follow both global and local, especially Nigerian Data Protection Regulation standards in the collection, storage, and processing of customer data. We partner with and retain the best cyber infrastructure companies to ensure access and integrity of our customers’ information aren’t compromised.
There are inherent risks in investing, but these risks are largely mitigated by our regulators, governance structure, and well-defined risk framework.
TC: For our final question, we want to know how you see the fintech/banking industry evolving in the coming years, and how Bankly MFB intends to adapt to these changes.
SA: All banks and fintechs will become very similar. What will differentiate winners from other players is customer experience i.e. how many and how well problems are solved before customers are aware those problems/needs emerge.
To find out more about Bankly InvestPro visit www.investpro.bankly.ng here.
