Wema Bank declares N556.4 million on ad spend in Q1

One of the oldest banks in Nigeria, Wema Bank has revealed it spent a total of N556.4 million on advertising in the first half of 2018, a 78% increase from the N311 million spent a year earlier. The bank has increased its ad spent since the launch of its revolutionary digital online banking platform, ALAT.



Last year, the bank spent a total of N1.21 billion on advertising and marketing about three times the N421 million spent in 2016. In total, the bank has now spent about N1.7 billion on advertising in the last 18 months. Wema Bank launched ALAT in May 2017 and since then the bank claims it has enrolled about 200,000 new customers, who have carried out almost 900,000 transactions totaling N12 billion.

ALAT by Wema Bank has led the way in the digital banking space in Nigeria and is available on the Google and AP store. According to data from the Google Playstore, ALAT has over 100,000 downloads same with the Wema Bank app owned by the parent company. Wema Bank embarked on a massive rebranding exercise in 2015, introducing a new logo and pledging to remain innovative. ALAT was its first major innovative products and since then the bank has spent billions on technology and promotional activities for the application.

In March the bank released two new features for ALAT that allows it to offer quick short-term loans and a virtual dollar card for paying online internationally. The ALAT Virtual Dollar Card is a non-physical, dollar-denominated debit card designed for online payments. Like ALAT Loans, the card is available to all the bank’s customers through its apps. The ALAT application was recently named ‘Best Digital Bank in Africa’ at the 2018 Asian Banker Awards.

In a recent study, it was discovered that Nigerian Tier 1 banks spent about N35.7 billion on advertising in the full year ended December 31st, 2017. This amount is slightly above the N31.1 billion spent for the same purpose in 2016. Wema Bank’s advertising spend is still significantly lower than that of other Tier 2 banks such as Diamond Bank and FCMB, who spent about N3.2 billion and N2.1 billion respectively on advertising and promotions.