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 Our Strengths

Our strength as a group lies primarily in our diverse people and their limitless capacity to bring their passion to bear on the development and delivery of innovative products and services, creating an excellent customer experience to deliver timely and bespoke solutions for our multinational and multicultural customers. We have created a corporate culture founded upon strong organizational values and performance-driven operating standards.

We derive our strength from our unique positioning which include:

  • Large balance sheet size and strong liquidity: These enable us to play at the top end of the all the markets we operate. Our balance sheet size means are always the bank to go to for big ticket transactions across Africa. Our capacity is shown in the many big ticket transactions we have been involved in either as a stand-alone financier, or as a lead arranger in syndication deals. We have consistently played leading roles arranging finance for critical sectors of the African economy in the areas of; oil and gas, power, telecommunication agriculture amongst other sectors. .
  • Strong spread across Africa: Our presence across 19 African countries means that we can follow our customers and businesses across national boundaries providing them with all the support they need for their businesses and personal comfort, no matter where they decide to travel, do business or live. We have strong presence in both regional and in the three major financial centres of London, New York and Paris, giving us a unique positioning that no Africa bank can boast of.
  • Multicultural, Multilingual staff: We are in the unique position of having a multilingual and multicultural operation, with a staff base that speak the three major languages in Africa and globally namely; English, French and Portuguese. Our customers are therefore never at a loss with their transactions in the bank no matter the language they decide to deal in.
  • Diverse customer base: We serve diverse customers across different national, cultures and languages cutting across all strata of businesses and persons. We are bankers to leading large corporates, as well as small business owners. We also serve high net worth individuals (HNIs) as well as retail customers.
  • Strong public sector reputation: In all our countries of operations, we have a strong working relationship with the public sector; supporting the public sector in its fiscal operations, while also meeting their long term infrastructure finance needs.
  • Experienced Management:   The UBA management team are well experienced, having long years of experience in both the banking industry and beyond.  The Management team is also consistently exposed to the best training both locally and abroad to ensure that they are always abreast of developments in the highly dynamic banking industry.
  • Strong IT Platform: UBA heavily invested to build one of the most secured IT platforms in the African banking industry to ensure customer transactions are always secure on the bank???s platform. The bank???s Internet Banking application and Data Centre operations passed ISO 27001 Certification mark in 2012-2015 confirming the adequacy of the bank???s security platform for online transactions. 
  • Strong risk management  

    The extensive nature of the bank???s operations means that UBA adheres strictly to the best risk management practices. UBA currently has one of the lowest NPLs in the banking industry, a testimony to the bank???s rigorous credit risk management process. The bank has in a place a strong enterprise management process that ensures that all risks are adequately covered in the bank???s operations.   

    Strong profitability; UBA remains one of the most profitable financial institutions in the African banking space.
  • Strong corporate social responsibility The bank is actively involved in community renewal and sustenance.  UBA remains the only bank in Benin with a purpose built foundation with a clear mandate to socially intervene in the communities and countries that the bank operates. The UBA Foundation is funded with one percent of the bank???s profit after tax. The Foundation???s interventions are in the need areas of education, health, human capital development and special projects.