NEWS: Nipost Set to Establish National Post Bank.

The Post Master General, PMG of the Nigerian Postal Service, Nipost, Mr. Bisi Adegbuyi says a National Post Bank is underway. He disclosed this yesterday, during the annual staff award and recognition ceremony of the Post held in Abuja. Adegbuyi said the plan to float the Post Bank was informed by the peculiarities and circumstances that will go into the Post banking system in line with the global best practice.
 With the collapse of some commercial banks in the rural areas due to lack of innovation and introduction of technology, the PMG explained that the new Post Bank as an agency bank will add to their revenue and do exactly what a Post Bank can do.
 “I think setting up Post Bank is in line with the global best practice, and I need to make this clarification very clear: whether a country needs a Post Bank is a function of its peculiarities. There is Post Bank in India and there is no Post Bank in Kenya, there is also no Post Bank in America. “If commercial banks today are closing their branches in the rural areas because of innovativeness and new technologies, I think it is now right for us to establish Post Bank in these areas.
 “What we will do as an agency banking will add to our revenue and do exactly what a Post Bank can do. All these plans are afoot. Our technical advisers have advised us to do a cocktail of payment settlement: agency banking and financial services that we can comparatively and advantageously go into without adding to our already heavy recurrent expenditure that is today a major albatross for Nigerian postal services.”
 On the impact of technology, the Nipost boss said deployment of technology will improve operational efficiency in the agency. “It depends on what kind of technology you want to deploy. We are currently talking to experts on how to reduce the recurrent expenditure content of the budget of NIPOST. “When you introduce technology into NIPOST you improve what is called track and trace, which is the soul of the service anywhere in the world: For somebody to post a letter or parcel and be able to track on day to day basis.”