Banque Populaire du Rwanda (BPR) unveiled the redesigned Kimironko branch on Tuesday in its drive to transform into a fully fledged commercial bank.

The bank plans to have the same look or concept for all its 18 main branches.

"As a commercial bank, we want to keep our loyalty to our clients by giving them better services in a good working place,” Ben Kalkman, BPR’s CEO said at the launch. 

BPR spent over Rwf100 million to re-brand the branch. Management is in the process of re-branding all the bank’s branches.

At the unveiling ceremony, Emmanuel Hategeka, the CEO of the Private Sector Federation said that the biggest percentage of Rwandan population has no access to banking services. 

"According to a FINSCOPE survey done in 2008, only 14 percent or 518,423 people of the adult population are banked. So having more banks like this one which is close to the will improve the banking,” Hategeka explained.

He added that with technologies such as mobile banking, banking services in Rwanda will cover a large r part of the population. 

Rwanda seeks to develop a stable and sound financial sector that is sufficiently deep and broad, capable of efficiently mobilising and allocating resources to address the development needs of the economy.

Hategeka said that the new redesigned branch ties in well with the current national customer care campaign.

"It is a known fact that we lose a lot of revenue due to poor customer care and research has shown that one customer well taken care of could be more valuable that ten thousands dollars worth of advertising,” the PSF boss said.

BPR is Rwanda’s largest bank by branch network and market share with Rwf5.8 billion worth of capital.

Netherlands based RABOBANK holds 35 percent of equity in BPR while the former cooperative members own 65 percent.

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