Ecobank CEO Jeremy Awori: ‘We don't always have to look outside to get money’

African financial institutions should look to local sources of financing rather than always turning directly to the West, but pension, sovereign and investment fund rules may need revising for this to be realised, according to the CEO of Ecobank Group.

Speaking at the Africa Financial Summit – AFIS 2024’s opening panel on 9 December 2024, Jeremy Awori, CEO of Ecobank Group said: “We go to raise money, and we go out to the West. I say: why aren’t we raising this money in Africa?”

Race to raise capital is on

Many commercial banks are looking to raise capital to scale up and take on the role international banks departing from Africa have played in trade finance and large-scale infrastructure finance.

New stricter capital requirements in markets such as Kenya and Nigeria are also promoting banks to raise funds.

The Central Bank of Nigeria upped capital requirements for banks in March 2024, making them nine times greater for banks with an international license, seven times greater for those with a national license, and four times higher for banks with a regional license.

This prompted commercial banks such as Access, Fidelity, Zenith, FCMB and others to collectively raise more than NGN 1.27tn ($847m) from March to October last year.

Kenyan banks could also follow suit to meet increased core capital requirements – from KES 250m ($1.9m) to KES 10bn ($77.5m) over a staggered six-year period – which were enacted in December last year.

Do laws on pension, sovereign and investment funds need revisiting?

But as the banks rush to raise capital, Ecobank’s Awori said banks are not able to rely on local financing as much as they wish.

“We have hundreds of billions of dollars of funds in Africa that are not invested in African financial institutions,” he said, calling on regulatory reform to allow greater contributions.

“That requires us to reflect on the laws around pension funds, investment funds [and] sovereign funds to boost the support we get from the likes of the World Bank, IFC (International Finance Corporation), AFC (Africa Finance Corporation) among others,” he continued.

Pension funds face investment limits in commercial banks due to regulatory constraints across African markets aimed at risk diversification and financial stability. For example, Nigeria’s PenCom regulation caps pension fund exposure to a single bank’s instruments at 3-5%, depending on its credit rating.

Enabling environment could drive economic growth

Ecobank’s CEO said that if local institutional investors like pension funds had an enabling environment to invest in African commercial banks or in African DFIs – that can then invest themselves in commerical banks – it will create a “multiplier effect” as commercial banks will then have the capital to support economic growth.

While Ecobank recently successfully raised $400m in a oversubscribed Eurobond issuance on the London Stock Exchange at the end of last year with support from Proparco among others, Awori said: “We don’t always have to look outside to get money. We understand our story better than anyone else. If we cannot invest in ourselves, who’s going to invest in us?

“…If we don’t invest at home, I’m not sure where we’re going to go in the long run,” he said.

🎬 Watch the full opening panel from AFIS 2024 below, which also featured Mohamed El Kettani, CEO, Attijariwafa Bank…