By Dickson Omobola
Financial institution, Sage Grey Finance Limited, has disclosed plans to list on the stock exchange and access more capital in-country, saying plans are also underway to acquire a commercial banking licence to provide more services and reduce its cost of operations.
Runsewe said it was more sustainable to match the company’s operations in Nigeria with capital sourced from the country.
Addressing newsmen at the company’s headquarters in Lagos, where it celebrated its 10 years anniversary, Managing Director of Sage Grey Finance Limited, Temitope Runsewe, said: “It is good to match your country’s operations with country capital, country risk. We are going to the stock exchange to raise capital because in the last 10 years, we have had excellent governance. We have excellent regulatory compliance, audit compliance and people. We have a strong brand, and we know that the stock exchange is the optimal place to raise capital.
“We plan on listing on the stock exchange to raise capital. After that, we want to convert to a commercial bank. With a commercial banking licence, we would like to provide more services and also reduce our cost of operations because we are quite decent and comfortable.”
On factors it considers before investing in a company, he said: “Be it lending or investment, or even advisory, we always check two major metrics, and they hold the same weight in business. One is commercial returns, risk-related. The second part is impact returns. So, we always go for the things that have high returns, but also high impact. Some will have high returns; they expect high returns and high impact.
“In that way, we are assessing that it’s more sustainable. So, a simple example could be, if you invest in a fantastic estate, real estate, somewhere, and they have fancy apartments, if you think about the fact that they have cleaners, those cleaners must have a way to live, which means next to that place, you must build a smaller apartment where they can live.
“The other thing is, obviously, regulatory-wise, and also checking the environment, making sure that it’s legal, making sure that it’s not only legal but will always be legal, and making sure that it is something that you can always ensure is compliant, that the market won’t move away from. But apart from all those guarantees, the one that we think is, after you do the typical, basic ones, is commercial returns.”
On 10 years of operations, he said: “Over the last 10 years, we built people, institutions, processes and a very strong history of regulatory compliance, a very strong brand. We are currently in four locations, three in Lagos, and we own three of the buildings. So, we are building infrastructure to make sure that we can scale properly. We have to do more. But we don’t have a problem with that because we have the right background, and we have the right pedigree and history of doing things consistently properly.”
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