ProCredit Bank opens

The ribbon was cut by the deputy Bank Governor Alhaji M. Fofanah and the acting Mayor Herbert George Williams from inside of the bank.
This was a break of tradition, were ribbons in opening ceremonies are cut from outside going inside.
“We as a bank are going out to meet the people rather than wait for the people to meet us” was the explanation given by management for this deviation from tradition.
The bank over the weekend had an elaborate ceremony to officially open its services in Sierra Leone. Mrs. Sandrine Massiani, the chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Bank, described PorCredit as a neighbourhood bank which was offering “ordinary people” access to banking services and provided loans to small and very small enterprise in developing countries and transition economies.
She said, “the bank is a group of network of 21 banks in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa.”
Mrs Massiani said they came to Sierra Leone for the first time in 2005 and very rapidly they were convinced that the gap between the demand and supply of formal financial services was enormous, that the banking sector, even though dynamic but remained small and concentrated because very small enterprises were lacking access to professional banking services and credit.
She announced that the bank in its six months of operations had registered over 5000 customers without engaging in any significant marketing campaign.