The Sierra Leone Commercial Bank, year after year, because of excellent management and operational culture and teamwork, keeps reaching higher performance heights. Ibrahim Babatunde Sesay Reports.

Although SLCB is yet to publish its official statement, sources from both the Bank of Sierra Leone and the Ministry of Finance indicate that SLCB has broken the one hundred billion Leones pretax mark in its 2019 annual statement.

After tax, SLCB hit Le100 billion in profits. This is the first time SLCB has made profit of over Le100 billion, making it the most successful commercial bank in the country.

Early this year, SLCB also paid more than Le5 billion in dividends to the Government of Sierra Leone.

Over the past five years, to ensure that it incorporates cutting edge banking technology revolutions, with a view to ensure performance and customer satisfaction, SLCB has spent a tidy amount of money on both technological innovations and staff competence training.

To enhance customer service, as well as to deepen financial inclusion, SLCB has in the recent past incorporated safe secure mobile platforms including community banking kiosks at Goderich, Wilberforce and Jui to take banking to the doorsteps of the un-served.

This has succeeded in bringing onboard tens of thousands of new customers.

Under the leadership of Fidelis Turay who has over 30 years commercial banking experience and Deputy MD Bockarie Kalokoh, SLCB remains fully committed to its vision and mission of being the leading financial services provider in the country delivering value to all its stakeholders.

In its steady upward growth trajectory, in 2018 SLCB recorded pretax profit of Le79.5 billion which management said was achieved in the face of fierce industry competition and a sluggish economy.

Voted in 2017 as the best financial institution in the country by All Walks Of Life, SLCB is the only bank with customer deposit exceeding Le1.1 trillion.

With branches on Freetown, Waterloo, Njala, Bo, Kenema, Koidu and Makeni, SLCB offers its various categories of customers online banking, current account, savings account, fixed deposits, foreign exchange account, loans and advances, investment management and various types of money transfer including Western Union, Swift.