Post Consolidation Bank Services and Banker Customer Relationship

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

       In any developing and developed economy, the role of a well structured financial system cannot be over-emphasized. And for a financial system to mobilize and allocate saving of the country successfully and productively and to facilitate day to day transactions there must be a class of financial institutions that the public views as safe and convenient outlets for its savings. In virtually all countries, the single dominate class of institutions that have emerged to play this crucial role as both the repository of a large fraction of the society’s liquid savings and the entry through which payment are made is the commercial bank. According to Bhole, (1997) a community can not exist without banking services unless it is to remain in a primitive state. It need to secure place in which to store money and things and evolve an efficient method of provision of cash to meet society’s cash transaction requirements safe and convenient payment mechanism which facilities exchange, widens market and extends to degree of specialization and ability to borrow in case of need, and a collection of services in a significant way. The roles and services rendered by the banks in a monetary economy. (Perry 1984).

       In Nigeria, modern banking took root in 1892 when the first commercial bank, African Banking Corporation was established. Put the starting of modern indigenous commercial bank as 1924, when he said “in an attempt to break the monody of foreign banks, efforts was the establishment of the industrial and commercial bank in 1929” (Nwikina 1997). The period up to the year 2004 saw the establishment and collapse of many banks in Nigeria, with the attendant consequences on their services and the future of the bank customer. Banks in Nigeria, up to 2004 were bedeviled by so many ills, including capital in adequacy and bad management that they could not be said to be rendering required services to their customers.

       In an Endeavour to address the ills of the banks and the reposition the banks to enable them meet up their obligation, the Central Bank of Nigeria ordered a recapitalization process, putting bank minimum capital base at N25 billion, this process, which was concluded in Dec., 2005 is popularly referred to as “Bank consolidation” and it saw the emergence of 25 mega banks from the over 86 banks that where in existence before then. With this process concludes to what is the hope of the banks customers with regards to bank services and bank customers relationship? Will the consolidation result to better service to the customers with new array of services rendered more efficiently? These are the issues that this project is set to solve.