By Dickson Omobola
Financial institution, Sage Grey Finance Limited, has disclosed plans to transition into a commercial bank in 2027, saying it aims to build the company into a tier-one Nigerian bank within the next 10 years, with strong wholesale, retail and commercial banking operations.
The firm also said plans were underway to transition into a non-operating holding company and subsequently into a consolidated proprietary investment company.
Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Sage Grey Finance, Temitope Runsewe, disclosed this at the company’s 10th anniversary celebration held in Lagos.
Speaking at the event, Runsewe said: “In the last 10 years, we started out as an advisory firm, providing financial advisory, supporting financial institutions and large-scale projects, providing just corporate finance and advisory. Generally, like I said, financial institutions, TFIs, commercial banks and also large-scale projects of infrastructure, energy, distribution, manufacturing, are those we have advised.
“Now, we expanded, and one of the reasons why we expanded was to add more services, be able to support. It’s one thing to advise people, when you see that you have talent, how do you build the capability to solve that talent? But first, you bring other people to solve those capabilities. But then when you see friction, it makes more sense for you to scale up and build the capabilities yourself.
“So over time, we developed more capabilities. We had to go straight into financial services. So we could actually have the cash ourselves, invest, lend, perhaps, warehouse transactions directly.
“Based on that, we went to financial services. Now, financial services, people want to do large-scale projects. Technology makes it easier, either for monitoring, supervision, or for distributing whatever value you’re trying to create.
“So we had to invest along the value chain, invest in technology. Because we realised that, one, you need to have a lot of technology to support your clients, but also to support your aspirations. And all the technology we’re looking for, they’re not really on the shelf.
“You have to put in more tools. It made more sense for us to invest both in technology and also in infrastructure, quickly. And after a while, we saw that even though we could lend, we could provide technology to support, there’s always still a gap.
“Additional capital, maybe perhaps preferred equity, ordinary equity, or structured finance, things to complement the debts. To make all the stakeholders more comfortable. Based on that, we had to directly restart the development of capabilities to be able to invest.
“Now, we are quite proud to say that we are into financial services, we are into technology. At the same time, we are into investments. That explains why you see some transactions that are state-of-the-art finance.
“We want to transition to a commercial bank by next year. I want to build Sage Grey Finance into a tier-one Nigerian bank in the next 10 years with strong wholesale, retail and commercial banking opportunities. Also, while being that, we still plan on being the largest impact financing institution. We want to transition to a non-operating holding company and then a consolidated proprietary investment and investment activities through Sage Grey Capital.”
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