Arise brings together the African holdings of three cornerstone investors, Norfund, FMO and Rabobank under one company, which will provide focus, scale and impact as Sub Saharan Africa’s Investment and Development Partner.
This work will rollout in late January 2017 and the account will sit in the Johannesburg agency, but may migrate to Cape Town as the client moves their offices to the mother city in January next year.
According to the Arise decision-makers, the pitch was awarded to Brand Union due to the agency’s deeply entrenched experience of brand creation and financial services.
Mathew Weiss, managing director of Brand Union Africa, says, “Arise wants to make a positive, long-term contribution to the financial services industry in Africa. We were attracted by the client’s clarity of purpose. We look forward to working closely with the new CEO, Deepak Malik and his leadership team to amplify the brand’s core vision of empowering Africans through building better and more inclusive financial services institutions.”
Arise has both commercial and developmental goals, and its ultimate aim is summed up by Nanno Kleiterp, CEO at FMO, who says, “This partnership will increase the availability of financial services to small and medium enterprises. Above all, it will allow the people in Sub-Saharan Africa to empower themselves by getting bank accounts and taking loans and thus building a better life for their families.”
It will achieve this by taking minority investments in African banks and then working with those banks to improve their performance in line with its long-term vision. Our job will be to create a brand that is attractive to those banks and potentially other FDIs and PE investors who want to join with Arise in investing in those banks.
For more information, visit
www.brandunion.com. Alternatively, connect with them on
Facebook or on
Twitter.