Access Bank Rwanda on Friday 14th June unveiled its new brand as a result of a merger between Access Bank Group and Diamond Bank in Nigeria.

This was in a press conference that was held yesterday at the Banks’ headquarters in Kigali town.

The press conference was attended by a number of media houses and presided over by a number of the banks officials who included: The Country Managing Director Mr Jean-Claude Karayenzi, the Group Head of Business Mr Olivier Gakuba, Head of Personal Banking Mrs Gloria Bwiza, Chief Risk Officer Mr John Nganga, CFO Mrs Alice Umulisa, Head of Global Trade Mrs Roselyne Kamanzi, Head of Human Resources Mrs Doreen Karigirwa and Head of Compliance Mr Festus Akokofe.

The Managing Director of Access Bank Mr. Jean-Claude Karayenzi unveiling the new brand to members of the media on Friday at the bank's headquarter.

Mr. Jean-Claude Karayenzi stated "The merging of these two Banks made Access Bank the largest retail Bank by number of customers but also diversified the business scope; spanning 3 continents, 12 countries and 29 million clients.”

He also went ahead to clarify on the reasons why the two banks merged and in his explanation, he stated how for long, Access Bank has been known to be a corporate Bank. On the other hand, Diamond Bank has been known as a retail bank so the merging of these two will help the Bank to serve the need and interests of both its clients, be it the corporate ones and the retail ones.

Mrs. Gloria Bwiza the Head of Personal Banking at the bank explaining to the media what clients are set to benefit as a result of the merger.

"With the merging of these two banks, no one is going to be left behind," he concluded

The Head of Personal Banking at Access Bank Rwanda Mrs Gloria Bwiza, emphasized that Access Bank Rwanda has started introducing new and better products and services that retail customers enjoy like Access Bank’s own payment gateway that currently allows an Access Bank customer or non-customer to send money to any person who has an account with any bank where Access Bank has presence and soon, clients will be able to send money to all African countries. She added that Access Bank is committed to deliver excellent customer experience by introducing more and new convenient ways of banking some of which will be introduced on the market within a period of one month from now.

Among issues raised by members of the media was the issue that there is likely to be an issue of retrenchment of many of its employees to which the Country Managing Director assured them that there was no one who was going to lose his/her job because of the merger.

"There is usually that scenario where many employees of an organization or company are laid off as a result of merging but our Group Managing Director promised that there is no current employee that is going to lose their job as a result of this merger as we have such a big number of clients and we need enough labor to handle that," he said.

Mrs Gloria Bwiza also noted that in a bid to support the government initiative of ensuring a cashless economy, our focus will be mainly placed on introducing digital products and services that provide convenience to every individual customer.