Polaris Bank’s VULTe Pulls Ahead, Wins Double as Nigeria’s Best Digital Bank

…wins MSME Bank of the Year Award too

ALIMOTU SHADIAT

Polaris Bank shone brightest over the weekend as its bespoke home-grown digital bank, VULTe capped its string of wins with two more prestigious awards as the Best Digital Bank at both BusinessDAY’s Banks And Other Financial Institutions (BAFI) Awards and The Nigerian Fintech Awards 2022 respectively.

VULTe, is a digital bank solution designed to enable customers consummate every banking transaction, from account opening, through requesting for certain categories of loans, to generating bank statements. It also connects the customer to discover lifestyle trends and social events. It is an all-in-one solution that is created to offer the most convenience for customers and built to understand the needs of the customer and provide solutions to everyday challenges of accessing financial service solutions.

In the last 12 months, VULTe which hitherto caters more to individual customers, now has enhanced capabilities to render seamless self-services to SMEs, High Net worth, and retail customers. The over 40million MSME operators in Nigeria could now access collateral-free loans for personal and business purposes; where eligible entrepreneurs and SME operators could apply and get up to N20million in a space of 5 minutes without visiting the Bank in person.

Symbolically, VULTe has made another significant history in the Nigerian banking and financial services sector by emerging the winner of the prestigious BAFI Awards back-to-back having won the same award last year. BusinessDAY is Nigeria and Africa’s leading and most respected business media group and organisers of numerous respected awards in the financial sector, as well as in other key sectors of the economy.

The Nigerian Fintech Awards on other hand is Nigeria’s biggest and most recognised Fintech award. The awards presentation ceremonies took place on Friday and Saturday in Lagos.

In the citation of Polaris Bank’s VULTe read by the organisers of The Fintech Awards 2022 shortly before the presentation of the award of Best Digital Bank, VULTe was preferred ahead of others in its competitive set on certain key parameters.

These include convenience, intuitiveness, trust and efficacious management system.

“For a digital bank that provides convenient account opening in minutes, intuitive loan application, scheduled payments, personal digital card management, trustworthy security, and personal finance management, VULTe by Polaris Bank is hereby declared the winner of the Best Digital Bank category,” the organisers announced.

Similarly, while presenting the Best Digital Bank award to the Bank, BAFI Awards organisers disclosed that the awards selection/review committee voted Polaris Bank’s VULTe the winner having outperformed its industry peers, like ALAT and OneBank across eight metrics for consideration.

The metrics include strength of strategy for attracting and gaining digital customers, accelerated user engagement, success in getting clients to use digital offerings, growth of digital customers, and platform security.

Other metrics are the breadth of product offerings for retail and corporate clients, evidence of tangible benefits gained from digital initiatives and web/mobile site design, intuitiveness and functionality.

At the same BAFI Awards Polaris Bank was declared ‘MSME Bank of the Year’ ahead of FCMB and Fidelity Bank in what the organisers described as the Bank’s expansive impact on MSME operators across Nigeria.

Polaris Bank in May this year launched a N1billion fund for MSMEs in partnership with Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) in what the Bank explained was aimed at providing the much-needed funding to create wealth and empower entrepreneurs and players within the MSME space in Nigeria, starting with Lagos.

Prior to the launch of the N1billion MSME Fund, Polaris Bank had committed, and indeed, provided multibillion financing to MSME operators across sectors, health inclusive among other incentives, like moratorium on facilities granted to cushion the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses.

Polaris Bank is a digitally enabled Bank focused on providing superior financial solutions and products to its customers across sectors with industry-specific and individual needs.