Patrick Akinwutan is a highly skilled banker and leader with decades of experience. He is the Managing Director of Ecobank Nigeria. Patrick has been Managing Director and Regional Executive of Ecobank Nigeria since August 2018.
Prior to his appointment, Patrick was the Group Executive, Consumer Banking responsible for leading the Consumer Banking business across Ecobank’s global network of 40 countries, 36 of which are in Africa. As a seasoned banker with over 20 years of senior and executive management experience, Patrick has held several strategic positions for the Ecobank Group in Ghana, Togo, and Nigeria. He had previously been a Group Executive Director on the Board of ETI and Executive Director in Ecobank Nigeria.
Patrick started his career with Ecobank in 1996 as Head of Commercial Bank and Regional Head in Ecobank Nigeria and since then he has held various senior and executive positions in Nigeria and within the Ecobank Group, including Executive Director, Retail Bank, Ecobank Nigeria, Group Chief Finance Officer, ETI, Group Executive Director, Operations & Technology, amongst others.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria. He holds an MBA from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria. He is also an alumnus of the Harvard Business School’s Senior Executive Program.
Ecobank is a full-service bank, providing wholesale, retail, investment and transaction banking services and products to governments, financial institutions, multinationals, international organisations, medium, small and micro businesses and individuals. The Group is owned by more than 600,000 local and international institutional and individual shareholders.
The Bank was established as a bank holding company in 1985 under a private sector initiative spearheaded by the Federation of West African Chambers of Commerce and Industry with the support of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). In the early 1980’s foreign and state-owned banks dominated the banking industry in West Africa. Commercial banks in West Africa owned and managed by the African private sector were a rarity. Its founders created ETI with the objective of filling this vacuum.
The Federation of West African Chambers of Commerce promoted and initiated a project to create a private, regional banking institution in West Africa. In 1984, Ecopromotions S.A. was incorporated. Its founding shareholders raised seed capital for feasibility studies and the promotional activities leading to the creation of ETI.
In October 1985, ETI was incorporated with authorised capital of US$100 million. The initial paid up capital of US$32 million was raised from over 1,500 individuals and institutions from West African countries. The largest shareholder was the ECOWAS Fund for Cooperation, Compensation and Development (ECOWAS Fund), the development finance arm of ECOWAS.
Ecobank signed a Headquarters’ Agreement with the Government of Togo in 1985, which granted it the status of an international organisation. This status came with the rights and privileges necessary for ETI to operate as a regional institution, including the status of a non-resident financial institution. ETI commenced operations with its first subsidiary in Togo in March 1988.
Today, Ecobank is the leading pan-African bank with operations in 39 countries across the continent. It has a larger African footprint than any other bank in the world. Ecobank currently operates in countries in West, Central, East and Southern Africa, namely Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Group also has a licenced operation in Paris and representative offices in Beijing, Dubai, Johannesburg, London and Luanda.
While Ecobank’s 20,331 employees make the group the largest employer of labour in the financial sector in Middle Africa, the bank operates as “One Bank” with common branding, standards, policies, and processes. This makes for consistent and reliable service to over 10 million customers across this unique network of 1,265 branches, 2,690 ATMs, and 13,800 POS machines.