UMB has held its annual festival of Nine Lessons and Carols Night Service, at the Bank's head office at the SSNIT Emporium, Airport City, Accra.

The annual event is to usher UMB stakeholders into the Christmas season and to share in the joy of the yuletide and also to sing praises to the Almighty God and to thank him for how far, he had brought them as a bank.

The nine scripture lessons taken from the Bible to herald the birth of Jesus Christ were read by UMB Staff from the books of Genesis, Isaiah, Luke, Mathew and John and each of the nine readings was preceded by carols from the One Voice Choir, Booster Boys and the Ghana Police Band.

Mr John Awuah, the Chief Executive Officer of UMB envisioned the coming year, 2018 to be more customer focused; as the Bank’s theme for 2017 was enhancing customer experience and said the Bank places customers first in all they did particularly interaction points, as such, the introduction of its service quality training programmes aimed at taking staff including; security personnel through what it takes to exceed the customer’s expectation.

Mr Awuah said the year 2017 had its own challenges, but the Bank saw every challenge as an opportunity, adding that "that is why despite all odds, we have been able to meet every agenda we set at the beginning of the year".

He noted that the success the bank chalked was hinged building partnerships and alliances; stating that however, in 2017, one key partnership they went into was the alliance with the UK-Ghana Chamber of Commerce.

He said the inauguration of their Business Incubation Centre to support the Government’s One District, One Factory initiative was a major achievement and the UMB Public Private Partnership (UMB PPP) Incubator Centre was to crystallize a point made by the Bank when its Management and Board delegation visited President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo; that as a Bank they had set their liquidity space up to one hundred million dollars to help them to roll out of government’s initiative.

Mr Awuah said UMB had an impressive budget allocation for its social intervention programmes; lots of community activity, but unfortunately the Bank had not been known for any specific initiative.

He said that in addressing the issue, they launched the UMB Foundation headed by their Director of Marketing and Communications; and the unit was supposed to handle all community initiatives and social interventions.

Mr Awuah said the Foundation had three key areas covering; education, health and the promotion of Ghanaian heritage and culture and commended former Managing Directors of UMB for their contribution throughout the Bank’s 45 years of experience and 2018, would be a remarkable one for the Bank tasking team members and staff to open up their minds to the 2018 opportunities.