First Bank creates new support framework for Nigeria private schools

First Bank of Nigeria has announced its FirstEdu educational solution designed to support schools to meet their medium and long-term goals for growth and improvement.

Folake Ani-Mumuney, its Group Head, Marketing & Corporate Communications, said this in Lagos on Wednesday.

“The FirstEdu product includes FirstEdu portal and FirstEdu loan which is targeted at private nursery, primary, secondary and A-level schools to provide access to flexible funding, replace old furniture and equipment as well as refurbish dilapidated buildings and classroom blocks.

“With this product, school owners/proprietors can stay ahead of competition in providing educational services and support to the target population by maintaining acceptable standard infrastructure at all times.

“The product enables customers to access up to N20 million facility with no tangible collateral apart from domiciliation of school fees account with the bank.

“This reduces the cost of borrowing to the customer and eliminates the challenges posed by the provision of additional demanding collaterals.

“In addition, FirstEdu portal is a robust web-based enterprise portal that enables educational institutions (private nursery, primary, secondary, A-level schools and tertiary institutions) manage academic, administrative, professional, logistics and payment challenges.

“The basis for its robustness is to take the stress of logistics and payment challenges off schools as they focus on meeting the year-long and medium-term objectives of their school(s),” she said.

Ani-Mumuney said that the product features and benefits included e-learning, virtual library and facilitation of exchange programmes with foreign educational institutions, academic and student events/time-table/calendar management.

Others include school fees payment via the internet, online information and result checking, interactive community forum between students and teachers.

It also affords applicants the opportunity of enrolling from the comfort of their homes or any location around the world without licensing, installation and maintenance cost and plugs avenues for revenue leakages amongst others.

Abiodun Famuyiwa, the Group Head, Products and Marketing Support, was quoted as saying that with FirstEdu, private schools across the various levels of education in Nigeria had the right tool to boost their businesses to their desired level.

He urged customers and stakeholders to visit any FirstBank branch or make contact via the various social media channels for further information on the product.