 Monday 21st November 2022, all roads led to No. 31B, Ghana Street, Moitama, Abuja, for the unveiling of a new entrant into Nigeria's banking and finance ecospace. Professionals, investors, friends and well-wishers of the promoters converged to celebrate the arrival of Signature Bank, conceived in 2017 to close the yawning gap in customer satisfaction. Signature Bank offers professional audacity, trust and digital service excellence. Dr. Mutiu Sumono is the board chairman. Looking back on the journey to set up Signature Bank, I recall the initial discussions and strategy sessions with my brother and friend, Dr. Alex Oti, who I have immense respect for. He was very clear about the vision to revolutionize the financial services industry and impact the lives of customers in a positive way. The bank we are launching today is the realization of our joint aspirations. We have established a bank that will provide customers with easy, accessible and borderless financial services, driven largely by digital solutions. The goal is to give our customers the freedom to bank on the go, so that they can do business with us from anywhere, at any time, without the need for a brick or mortar. The Signature Bank brand is built around values of professionalism, audacity, creativity, trust and service excellence. It is a brand that is sophisticated, destructive and yet transparent. It is a brand that is built entirely around you, our customers. After a rigorous and painstaking approval process, Signature Bank is positioned to deliver easy, accessible commercial banking services to millions of underbanked Nigerians. Dr. Alex Oti is the founder of Signature Bank. The late Martin Luther King Jr. once remarked, if I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way. This update describes the Signature Bank journey. The journey began in 2017, driven by a yearning gap we identified. A vacuum created by repeated or resolved complaints, poor responsiveness and unsavory customer experience encountered regularly from the banks we did business with. It came from a yearning for simplicity and ease of doing business. And less than adequate attention to the dynamic needs of the customer, not just within Nigeria, but across continents. For example, paying your child's school fees, trading with partners overseas, settling bills without leaving the comfort of your home and making payments seamlessly. Welcome to the brand new world of artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing. In fact, welcome to the world of innovation, convergence, and the fourth industrial revolution. What customers across different business segments are looking for is a bank that faces their aspirations, their personal stories, and their lifestyles. In other words, customers want a bank that puts them first. Building on the learning points and successes of taking the Astwa Diamond Bank from a lost position in 2011 to becoming one of the eight systemically important banks, SIBs in Nigeria, a RetroTurBlazor, and Pioneer in Mobile Digital Banking. We set about to envision a new way of banking, a bank that leaves no one behind, a bank that is borderless and caters to the unbanked and underbanked, as of May 2022. Statistics has it that more than 42 million people in Nigeria have no access to financial services. We see a big opportunity here. As SIB nature, we believe that the individuality and uniqueness of every customer should be celebrated, just like our signatures are unique to each one of us. The Honorable Minister for Trade Otumbani Adibayo gave a goodwill message at the opening. My presence here today is to lend my support and to congratulate the shareholders of this laudable institution, Tignature Bank. Even the name itself lends itself to what we expect of the institution. I congratulate each and every one of you, and like the man of God has prayed, I pray that it will bring joy and happiness and thought to all those who bank here. Congratulations. We must celebrate indeed as not many mortals have been able to drive to this very point or achieved this feat. I will therefore offer my warm congratulations to the team and all the resource people that participated to bringing us to this point. I will also offer my congratulations to the Board of Directors, the shareholders, and especially the founder Alex Oti. I must also offer my congratulations to the regulators as yet another player comes in to deepen financial systems and to broaden inclusiveness. While we celebrate, we must be aware and we must also be sober. Because this great achievement that we have achieved today is the beginning of the work that is ahead of us and it comes with significant amount of responsibility. Licensed as a regional operator, SB offers disruptive, creative, and audacious commercial banking services to customers. Mrs. Noye Ayeni is the Chief Executive Officer. Signature Bank is a bank with a difference, is a bank like you know, is a regional and fully commercial bank registered to operate in south, south, south east, north west, and Abuja. And we have chosen Abuja to be a head office. We hope to make a mark by leveraging on technology to drive our financial solutions. We also hope to change the customer journey by creating exceptional customer service in the true sense of it. We have very skilled, very experienced professionals that are not just skilled and experienced, but they are passionate about service. So we are going to be very innovative in all our solutions to make a difference, to imprint a signature in the banking industry and make a mark in the financial landscape. The strategy of Signature Bank is to meet the customer's demand for flexible solutions in a constantly changing and evolving world. Ms. June Otiba is head of retail banking and Abuja region. At Signature Bank, we will approach the market differently and this we will do by co-creating products with you, our clients. We will put your needs at the centre of this approach. So our products will factor in the convenience of you, our clients, while ensuring simplicity and ease. This will ensure that your uniqueness is considered. So at Signature Bank, we understand that no one size fits all. So we will be developing products according to individual differences. So if you want anything that is not in our books today, all you need to do is to talk to us. We will go back, recreate it and come back to you with that. Our products will range from personal banking products, private banking and wealth management products, SME products, corporate banking products, digital banking products and so many more products. Signature Bank is here. Make your mark.