The most important adage and the only adage is, the customer comes first, whatever the business the customer comes first, Kerry Stokes, the chairman of the seven network company once said.

And for many, the customer is the king. For Banque Populaire du Rwanda (BPR), things are more than that as customers are well treated by getting warm customer care and services are well delivered to all clients.

To prove this, one can be referred to the recent concluded 19th International Trade Fair which was hosted in Kigali.

Of 420 exhibitors from all over the world, the bank was announced as the best customer care provider among others who brought various products to exhibit.

Eric Rutabana, head of cooperate Banking and Business at BPR is attributed the award to the bank’s efforts to offer customer care and quality services to the clients to maximize their satisfaction.

"We have won an award of customer care among all exhibitors in the expo and we welcomed the award, as Rwandans are aware, BPR got new supporters of Atlas Mara and our main objective is offer better customer care to our clients,” said Rutabana.

He said that much as the bank’s main objective in the trade fair was not to compete with other exhibitors, especially banks, doing the best they could was at the forefront along the who two weeks of exhibition.

"When we come to expo, we don’t intend to compete but rather to do our best to exhibit our products to impress customers, we did our best to offer good customer care and better service delivery, this is what we did and maybe the evaluators saw it as important,” he added.

New mobile application launched

During the exhibition, BPR launched a "mobile banking application” which officials believe would help clients do more money transactions and payment using the device, hence relieving the backlog of people who sought services from the bank branches.

He said that the customer care offered to clients will go hand in hand with going closer to the clients to ensure and go electronic to ensure that all services are delivered easily and to all.

" We also unveiled a new mobile banking application (during expo) which is a sign of ICT in our service delivery, ICT is one of our utmost tool we are promoting to help our clients to do money transactions and payments without necessarily going to the bank,” he noted.

"Our main objective to keep going closer to all Rwandans to ensure we are the leading bank in the country,” he added.

Ever since the Atlas Mara took over the stakes, BPR capital gone up to Rwf43.5 billion from Rwf15 billion before.

About BPR

The origins of BPR can be traced back to 1975, when the first Banque Populaire was formed in the settlement of Nkamba, in the city of Kibungo, Eastern Province. Over the next ten years many other similar banks were founded around the country. In 1986, the various autonomous Banques Populaires formed an umbrella called the Union des Banques Populaires du Rwanda (UBPR). UBPR was operated as a cooperative bank.

In January 2008, following 33 years of experience in the Rwandan financial sector, UBPR was transformed from a cooperative bank into a commercial bank: Banque Populaire du Rwanda S.A.

In June 2008, Rabobank, the Dutch cooperative banking conglomerate, acquired 35 percent of the shares in BPR.

In July 2012, Visa Inc. certified the bank to issue visa-branded debit and credit cards.

In January 2016, Atlas Mara completed its acquisition of a controlling stake of BPR after acquiring shares from existing shareholders and merging the bank with the commercial banking business that was spun off Rwanda Development bank (BRD).