By Alusine Fullah
Rokel Commercial Bank has on Friday 9th February 2024 won African Bank of the year. The prestigious honour awarded by EST Applied Intelligence (UK) is a reflection of the Bank’s outstanding reputation and its consistent efforts in providing outstanding banking services to its customers. 
With a strong focus on customer centricity and innovation, Rokel Commercial Bank has emerged as a trusted name in the financial space. In his key note address, Managing Director of Rokel Commercial Bank, Dr Walton Ekundayo Gilpin noted the bank’s commitment in the financial growth of Africa and more so in Sierra Leone He noted:
“As one of Sierra Leone’s top financial institutions, Rokel Commercial Bank has played an essential role in driving economic growth and development in the country. This Award serves as a testament to Rokel Commercial Bank’s untiring commitment to excellence and its significant contributions to the financial sector.”
Dr Walton further reveal major plans of Rokel Commercial Bank for 2024. In line with that, the bank is to organise a symposium on Cybersecurity and Financial Inclusion. This symposium aims to bring together industry leaders, political leaders, experts, and innovators to discuss the top five priorities of the African Banker of the year. Those priorities include: importance of Cybersecurity in Financial Services; Customer Data Protection; Cybersecurity an enabler for Financial Innovation and inclusion; the Central Bank’s Cybersecurity Technology Risk Management Guideline Resilience.
During the press conference, Dr Walton also noted that RCB is fully ready for the introduction of banking process automation. He said: “Account opening deposit management withdrawals and all other basic banking activities are set to be fully streamed to enhance better customer experience. This will significantly speed up our operations, reduce human errors, increase our capacity and productivity and give us the latitude to handle larger volumes of cash in very sort periods. In terms of cybersecurity resilience, we aspire toward building a robust cybersecurity protocol by increasing our capacity to identify, respond and quickly recover from cyber-attacks or threats…”
Receiving awards is not a new thing for Rokel Commercial Bank. For instance, on the 12th edition of the DiasporaFOCUS National Development Awards Night, the Managing Director & CEO Dr. Walton E. Gilpin and three staff garnered five awards including the Bank of the Year award 2023.
