By Pascal Oparada
How willing is your bank to come for you? Can your bank brace the hazards of both land and sea to seek you out? How far can your bank go for you?
The new Access Bank advert demonstrates the desperation and, at the same time, the empathy banks employ to get to their customers.
Stories abound of how banks hound and almost harass daylight out of their prospective and existing customers to drop that money or open that account. What happens after the customer had done the needful is a story for another day.
But suffice it to say that the new Access Bank advert delivers a gripping story of how banks court their customers as a man would court a new or intending bride.
A customer, Bello, receives a call from customer relations officer about an incomplete account opening form. His signature is missing.
The snag is that Bello wouldn’t be available to provide the omitted signature. Or worst still, he lives in one of the slums in Lagos, apparently Makoko area.
Makoko has been in the global eye as one of the world’s most famous slums. It is a ‘floating city’ and a fishing community. It has attracted global icons like Ben Afleck, a renowned American actor, who visited the community in 2012.
Makoko has a floating school, which was destroyed by storm in 2016. It’s scenic environment is haven for Nollywood. The film, Gidi Blues, staring Gideon Okeke, Tina Mba, BankyW, Hauwa Allahbura, Bukky Wright and others, was done in there.
It is built on the Lagos Lagoon, a place which evokes memories of death and pleasure, depending on how you see it. Many have taken their lives in that place.
The Third Mainland Bridge looms large at the foreground of the Lagoon.
Lagos State government dreams of building Africa’s own Venice in Makoko and so continues to harass and intimidate residents with eviction notice all the time.
So, it is in this place that Bello, a fisherman, resides. He ekes out a living by fishing.
When he got the call from the bank, he told them he would not be available as he would be out in the sea fishing on that day.
“Not a problem”, the bank’s staff assures him. “We will come to you”.
So began the tortuous journey of locating Bello.
Armed with just the bank’s form, which has Bello’s account details and passport photograph, the staff took off and began to meander through muddy streets. He would constantly run into the ever ubiquitous tricycle operators who ram into him from time to time and wading through the Lagoon in canoe.
Everyone in the community seems to know Bello, as they kept pointing the bank’s staff further ashore until he located him. Deal done and dusted, Bello tries teaching the man who has taken so much pain to find him how he makes his living.
It is a story of passion and dedication to duty told by one of Nigeria’s biggest banks. It is a story that would pull viewers in with so much empathy. And, also, a story that leaves many questions unanswered.
Would that same bank, which went the ‘extra mile’ to locate a single customer, take the same step when he would need the bank’s assistance in the future?
Bello is a fisherman and so would need help financially.
So, when Bello’s fishing nets and Canoe are all worn out and replacements are needed, will the bank take the same measure of pain to help ease his financial burdens and at what percentage of interest rate?
There are many Bellos out there asking these questions and more.