The question for many banks today is whether to broaden client outreach to as many different customer segments as possible or concentrate on serving a targeted group. Mali’s BICIM, during its massive reorganization three years ago, took the latter route, with exceptional results. Intent on providing excellent personalized service to the country’s top-level clients, BICIM has found its distinctive niche and role, as CEO Samir Mezine describes in our interview.
BICICI, BNP Paribas’s subsidiary in Côte d’Ivoire, is one of the country’s top banks, committed to providing a wide and diversified range of products and services to a client base that is equally wide and diversified, from SMEs to ordinary citizens who are stubbornly resistant to trusting banks. CEO Jean-Louis Menann-Kouamé discusses how BICICI is part of the advance guard leading the West African banking evolution.
Juliet Morris of International Banker interviews Jean-Louis Menann-Kouamé, CEO of BICICI on his banks great annual results, the relationship between the bank and the BNP Paribas Group and the future of banking in the Ivory Coast.