By Nat Amogu

The Managing Director/CEO, Fidelity Bank, Mr. Reginald Ihejiahi, has raised the bank from obscurity to prominence, sailing on the wings of the banking consolidation storm of 2005. As a strategist, he was able to pull a small and possibly vulnerable bank through the ordeal of the consolidation exercise and came out the other side a major player, while the tsunami sank some famous bank executives and raised some relatively unknown ones to prominence.

In trying to rescue the bank, Ihejiahi had several options of growing the bank and one of such options was through mergers and acquisition and the other was organic growth. He explored both options in his effort to ensure that the bank was not swept away with the consolidation tide. Today, Fidelity Bank has not just survived, but can compete both nationally and internally with other banks because he has taken the bank to a higher level

Ihejiahi’s interesting banking career started in 1983 at IMB, then, the Nigerian branch of the First National Bank of Chicago, USA. He  has held strategic positions in all aspects of banking up to executive board levels in both Investment Banking and Large Retail Banking for about three decades and has served on the boards of key banking industry organizations, including the board of the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC).

He was  at various times  the General Manager responsible for pioneering the Corporate Banking Business of a new generation bank;  Head of Strategy for the turn-around of an old-generation bank; and leader of an enquiry team at a distressed merchant bank. In March 1993, he was appointed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) as Managing Director and Chief Executive on the interim management board to review the problems at the defunct Alpha Merchant Bank Plc.

Since he assumed duties as the MD  and CEO of Fidelity Bank Plc., in February 2004, he has been working unrelentingly with his board and management to steer Fidelity Bank successfully through the consolidation period, making it one of the 25 banks (out of 89) which scaled through the first phase of the banking industry consolidation programme. Under his leadership, Fidelity Bank moved from 22 branches in February 2004 when he took over to 205 today and recently successfully concluded a $300 million International Eurobond issue, which only three Nigerian banks have achieved to date.

As the CEO of Fidelity Bank, Ihejiahi has used his position to encourage the institution to give back to society through the bank’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.  The bank supports causes for the environment through co-operation with the Nigeria Conservation Foundation (NCF) and environmental beautification, in partnership with state governments.

Ihejiahi’s efforts have made Fidelity to be named the Most Socially Responsible Bank in Africa in 2008 during the World Bank annual meetings in Washington DC and for the past seven years,  has been consistently winning the Social Enterprise Reports and Awards (SERA).

It was therefore no surprise that Ihejiahi, who distinguished himself as a true  professional and  leader at a time of serious crisis in the banking sector,  was honoured at the high profile event , which held at  the Civic Centre, Ozumba Mbadiwe Road, Victoria Island, Lagos, along with six other  prominent Nigerians.

They included  the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal; Minister of Housing, Land and Urban Development, Ms. Amal Iyingiala Pepple; Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State; his Kano State counterpart,  Mohammed Rabiu Kwankwanso and Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State as well as the former Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Chief  Festus Odimegwu.

An Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR),  Ihejiahi was born on April 11, 1959. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accountancy from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he was a Mobil Oil scholar.  He also holds a Master of Science degree  in Finance & Accounting from the London School of Economics, University of London and a doctorate degree in Business Administration (Honoris Causa) from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. A Fellow of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants (FCCA) UK, and of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), he  is the   Chairman of Council of the Nigeria-Netherlands Chamber of Commerce (NNCC).

A former member of the Governing Council of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, Nigeria and currently a member of the Board of Directors of Unified Payments Systems, former Valucard Limited, Ihejiahi, who   is also a recipient of the Pontifical Honours Award of the Catholic Institute of West Africa, has received significant banking and management training in renowned business schools, including INSEAD, France; Oxford Business School and the London Business School.

He built Fidelity on five major pillars that combine to form a CREST on the bank  today and they include: Customer first, Respect, Excellence, Shared ambition and Tenacity, so when he was chosen to succeed has former boss, Mr. Nebolisa Arah, it was an opportunity for him to prove his ingenuity and re-inforce the bank’s bottomline. Fidelity was just a small institution that needed a shake-up, but plans  had to be put on hold when a few months after he took over as the MD/CEO, the then CBN Governor, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, came up with the banking consolidation in July 2004, a policy which brought about the imperative to increase the bank’s capital from N3.5 billion to meet the N25 billion threshold. Fidelity was able to raise N23 billion on its own out of the N25 billion and then went into merger with other banks. He is a consummate manager whose dexterity is quite obvious, going by the pace at which the bank had grown in the last five years.

He recently added another feather to his cap as the Public Policy Research and Analysis Centre (PPRAC) in Lagos, bestowed on him the 2013 Zik Prize for Leadership in recognition of his stellar performances over the years and his professional leadership role and contributions to growth of the banking industry in the country.