The Need for Acquire®

The increasing complexity and sophistry of the business terrain in modern Nigeria and the African continent has led businesses to continually position and reposition themselves through mergers, strategic alliances, acquisitions and creative corporate financing; as means of coping with the demands of the new era. The most viable means of corporate financing for big businesses is financing through public share offers, accounting for the increase in the number of such offers across the entire continent in recent years.

The Acquire solution was conceived of and designed to enable companies improve and optimize on processes around rendering public share offers with special emphasis on overcoming some of the challenges have a limiting effect on the overall success of traditional share offer exercises including;

• Access to geographically disadvantaged investors (abroad and in the Diaspora)
• Inconveniences associated with physically completing and submitting offer subscription forms
• Limitations arising from restricting investors to paying using traditional means
• Cost of publicizing the offer

State-of-the-arts Share Offer Management System

The schematic below further illustrates the architecture of the Acquire Share Offer Management System;

Key Features

The Acquire system comprises boasts of the following:

User Access Strategy:

• A browser based system accessible from a central web application server
• Security credentials will be a Username & Password which will be required to access the System.

User Role Management Module:

• This provides functionality for the creation or modification of System User information as well as user assignment or reassignment to a defined User Role in the System.
• Users Roles are defined in the following categories; Bank Teller, Bank CSO, Bank Administrator, Auditor, Applicant, Agent.
• These User roles have fixed access and interactive privileges based on the purpose of each User in the system.

Web Portal Interface:

• Allows users to create and modify profiles during a registration process       
• Allows users request for shares by filling out an online subscription form 
• Allows existing shareholders to request for Right Issues by confirming their account info and providing ancillary information
• Allows users upload and append scanned copies of their signatures or thumbprints
• Provides accessibility for users to download and print subscription forms
• Allows users upload scanned copies of downloaded forms which have been duly filled and signed
• Allows users to make subsequent payments for more shares anytime within the offer period and view payment history reports over any period of time
• Notifies users on allotment positions after the allotment exercise and allows for viewing of allotment details
• Securely integrates with the InterSwitch WebPay Gateway to allow for Naira payments using InterSwitch Cards
• Securely integrates with the MasterCard & VISA processors in Nigeria to allow for International currency payments
• Provides payment confirmation features in cases where transaction statuses are Pending

In-Branch Interface

• Allows tellers to view applicants information based on form numbers provided by the applicant
• Allows tellers receive payments either as cash or cheque/draft and log accordingly
• Allows tellers to view and print out paid subscription forms for the applicant (especially where the applicant has not attached a thumbprint/signature online.
• Allows teller to resend pending web payment transactions to ascertain their status (failed or successful)
• Allows teller to view daily payment reports for EOD reconciliation

Central Administrative Interface

• Allows authorized bank administrators to create and edit other Bank user profiles
• Allows Bank administrators to setup share information (price, minimum units, multiples)
• Allows Bank administrators to view and print out paid applicant subscription forms to be collated and forwarded to the issuing houses for onward processing
• Allows Bank administrators to resend pending web payment transactions to ascertain their status (failed or successful)
• Allows Bank administrators to view subscription history Reports as well as transaction logs over any period of time
• Allows Bank administrators to update User allotment information after the allotment exercise

Reports:

• Summary and detailed reports can be generated across the system for Regular and Administrative User roles advanced search tools.

Audit Trail Module:

• This captures information on every interaction performed within the system
• This information includes who performed it (User credentials), when it was performed (Date/Time), what action was performed (Create, Update, Delete), what data was changed as well as the previous state of any data change.

Security and Control:

• Enforcement of logins using secure user IDs and passwords
• Use of session time outs after periods of inactivity
• Enforcement of single login sessions for each user
• Transmission of payment data from client browser to system servers via a secure encrypted tunnel

Tap into Numerous Benefits

Acquire is guaranteed to provide unprecedented value to companies and their customers thus providing the much needed competitive edge by:

• Extending the reach of pubic offers using the Internet as a medium of reaching investors both locally and internationally thereby potentially increasing the number of investors
• Providing convenient alternatives for Investors to make payments thereby potentially increasing individual investor spending.
• Providing easy-to-access information on the entire share offer both pre- and post- allotment  thereby increasing investor confidence
• Further projecting the image of the company globally as being progressive & dynamic; placing a premium on heightening customer satisfaction and overall experience.
• Reducing the overhead of administering the entire process manually by providing automated alternatives to collating and exchanging investor data with the Issuing Houses. This also reduces the share allotment interval
• Providing increased revenue generation potentials and cash control through float income accrued from payments received directly via this system as opposed to waiting on stock brokers who typically withhold payments until the preceding days to offer closure.

Unleash the Potentials- Case Study; First Bank Plc

Acquire^® enables the bank to provide reach previously untapped customer verticals as the following statistics show;

Summarized below are facts and figures regarding the online share offer solution;

FirstBank figures

The following further justifies the use of the solution in addition to increased revenue generation:

• Customer/investor convenience
• Positive projection of the bank

Also note;

• The transaction costs payable to the gateways are well within acceptable costs for rendering a share offer of such magnitude.
• The cost of implementing the solution is further justified by its reusability for the bank and can be seen as a small portion of the marketing budget for the offer (the portal provides cost effective and in-your-face marketing)
• The portal if properly publicized from day 1 shall generate way above the FirstBank figures (FirstBank as you none-doubted would have observed, did not publicize the website well enough)

We are at your service to enable you unleash the potentials.

• Security- Acquire® implementstested and trustedworld-class application level security, ensuring data confidentiality and integrity at all times.
• Reliability- Acquire® runs on a robust and stable transactions framework that guarantees at least 99.9% availability during production operations.
• Scalability- The solution is tailored for high transaction rates and is built to allow seamless growth in transaction processing capacity.
• Global Industry Standards- Acquire® is built on industry leading technologies and standards including the Microsoft .Net framework, Object Relational Mapping Framework (Hibernate) and supports multiple relational database management system like MS SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, mySQL, Posgres, etc.

Happy Customers

Take Control

Acquire ^® is the outcome of several years of work by seasoned Parkway consultants who have vast amounts of experience within the Nigerian e-payment industry.  

Backed by in-depth research, collaboration with contemporaries in other parts of the world & adaptation of world-class financial transactions systems, Acquire® is a condensation that is exactly adapted to meet the present requirements and dynamics of the Nigerian market thereby providing banks with what they need today to take their e-payment concerns to the next level.