Segun Agbaje’s clean-cut, youthful facial features belies his 55 years of age. His trim appearance also exudes discipline and purposefulness. Listening to him speaks volume. Nobody is left in any doubt that intelligence is also an additional quality of this very accomplished banker.

Agbaje, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Guarantee Trust Bank Plc, through quality leadership and innovativeness, has sustained GTB’s momentum of steady growth. Undoubtedly a thoroughbred banker, he has improved the bank’s fortune since he took control in 2011.

Agbaje cuts the image of a polished, elitist executive, an imagery accentuated by a noticeable British accent when he speaks on developments in the banking industry. His serious and preppy carriage has endeared him to some, while he is perceived by others as rather aloof. Perhaps, the singular factor which finds a commonality among observers of the Segun Agbaje brand is his total commitment to elevating GTBank’s status from a leading Nigerian bank determined to establish its pedigree as a reputable international institution, to an African financial power house with enviable global ranking.
His beginnings

In 1964, Olusegun Agbaje was born into the family of Chief Julius Kosebinu Agbaje and Mrs Margaret Olabisi Agbaje. His father was a banker and the mother, a teacher. The young Agbaje had therefore been familiar with the banking profession from a young age. Julius Agbaje, Segun”s illustrious father, ensured his son received quality schooling. For his secondary education, he attended both St Gregory’s College, Obalende, Lagos and St Augustine Academy, Kent, England. St Gregory is reputed for being at par with the best in this clime in terms of sterling tutelage and grooming of young, impressionable minds towards purposeful pursuits in life. Agbaje went further to the University of San Francisco where he obtained a first degree in Accountancy and a master’s degree in Business Administration. He is also an alumnus of the Harvard Business School.

Career Odyssey

To have become an auditor at Ernst & Young (San Francisco branch), Agbaje fired an early warning shot about his desire to reach the pinnacle of his career. Ernst & Young is a gargantuan accounting firm which presently employs about 270,000 people worldwide and is ranked amongst the world’s top four firms in its category. In 1991, Agbaje took a bold step by quitting his job after a two-year stint with the prominent firm and retutned to Nigeria to start a banking career as a pioneer staff of GTB.

Steady rise
Agbaje’s climb to the topmost position at GTB was no sudden leap. He rose through the ranks and fully embraced the bank’s vision and mission from inception.

The various roles he played in upholding GTB’s core values of innovation, building excellence and superior performance, coupled with a commitment to higher return on investment to stakeholders, did not go unnoticed by his predecessors. This stood him in good stead as a candidate for the bank’s top position eventually. As a pioneer staff of no mean repute, he played his part in the earlier groundbreaking innovations championed by the bank. In return, the bank rewarded him with a steady climb on the leadership ladder. He became Executive Director in year 2000 and rose to the post of Deputy Managing Director as far back as 2002. To hone his financial and administrative crafts, Agbaje traversed and supervised almost all the departments in GTBank. When he became Deputy Managing Director, he was in charge of Institutional Banking Division, overseeing the telecommunications, treasury, energy and corporate finance groups. He held the post for eight years before becoming the MD/CEO in June 2011. He has since been piloting the affairs of the bank towards securing for it a permanent spot as a reputable global brand.
Pushing the frontiers

As Deputy Managing Director, Agbaje was the leading force that pushed GTB’s initial Public Offer of N2.5 billion in 2002 and in 2007, he played a role in the actualisation of GTB’s unprecedented $350 million Eurobond offering.

Agbaje, a proponent of the new age banking regime, has since plugged into modern models and opportunities to drive innovative financial services that has continued to attract more customers to GTBank.
He disclosed recently that the bank now boasts over 15 million customers, yet it still aims to spread operations to five more African countries in the next 5 years. Apart from Nigeria, the bank is also in Liberia, Ghana, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and the United Kingdom.

Under Agbaje, GTBank also pioneered SMS banking by introducing the *737# mobile feature, enabling money transfer through SMS on mobile phones to any account. Call credit cards can also be bought through bank accounts. Other banks have since copied the initiative.
He is very conscious of the very fast changing nature of banking from the rather tedious brick and mortar operations and has been leveraging on data and artificial intelligence, constantly adapting to global trends.

Lately, Agbaje has been paying more attention to the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, SMEs, with plans to have stand alone groups for small businesses by designing products to meet their needs. The idea is for GTBank to further explore the potentials of SME’s that is presently just above 10 percent of the bank’s deposits and 2 percent of its loan books.
Agbaje says the bank intends to maintain a larger percentage of corporate business, but will grow retail and SMEs over the next three years through a more robust digital technology and strategy. He has thus been pushing for a reduction in data costs to further boost mobile banking services.

In the financial services market place, GTBank has introduced Quick Credit for Customers, GTWorld, GTMobile Apps and the Habari App which offers unique services to customers.
Agbaje’s era since 2011 has witnessed a steady rise in profits for the bank which has continued to offer dividend payments annually. Over N350 billion has been payed out thus far during his tenure. In 2017, the bank declared N79.4 billion as dividend, the highest figure before then in the bank’s history. And GTBank’s share price has also climbed to over 200 percent since Agbaje became the head of the bank.

GTBank Plc’s unaudited financial results for first quarter ending March 31, 2019 shows improved performance over 2018 records across all financial metrics, with earnings increasing by 1.2 percent.

GTBank’s subsidiaries outside Nigeria were able to muster 12 percent of the bank’s profits in 2018, an achievement quite pleasing to Agbaje and his team.
Courtesy of these attainments, that has kept the bank in the lead, Agbaje is named the May makeitglobal.biz remarkable Entrepreneur of the month.
A member of several boards

Agbaje wears many caps with aplomb. He is a board member of Guarantee Trust Bank in United Kingdom, Gambia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. He is also a Director of MasterCard Advisory Board Middle East & Africa. He has also served as a Director of AXA Mansard Insurance PLC, FBN Quest Merchant Bank and InterSwitch Limited.

Quotes:
– “The only wealth that is sustainable is the wealth you work hard for, build and God blesses”.

– “If you work harder than anybody else, you will be smarter than anybody else”.
– “The ingredient to success remains the same, just as the way value remains the same, discipline, hard work
and integrity”.

– “The banks that will survive Will have to reinvent themselves. Innovation will have to be the bedrock of everything they do.”

Accolades

In the course of carrying out his duty of steering the affairs of GTBank towards excellence and profitability, Agbaje has been found worthy of several awards including:

-2012 & 2013- African Banker of the Year Award from The African Banker and Euromoney respectively.

– Under his leadership, GTBank Plc won in 2011 and 2012 The Best Bank in Nigeria awards from Euromoney.
-2013- GTBank under his leadership got the Best Bank in Africa Award from the African Banker magazine.
-2011- Also under his leadership, the bank got The Best Bank in Nigeria Award from London- based EMEA Finance magazine.
-2013- EMEA Finance magazine recognised Segun Agbaje as the Pan-African CEO of the year.
-2015- West Africa’s Business Leader of The Year Award, during the 2015 All Africa Business Leaders Awards.
-2017-Ai 100 CEO’s of the year by African Investors Awards.

-2018- Banker of The Year (Africa), at World Finance Awards.
-2018- African CEO of The Year at ADIC Awards.

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