K5m grand prize FDH Kukonza Tsogolo promo is a 70-year-old very small scale business lady

Nalikungwi handing over the cheque to lucky winner

* This money will really help me in terms of boosting my businesses

* And that of my children and grandchildren — who also run different businesses

By Victor Singano Jnr, Correspondent 

Sitiveria Nsope, who won K5 million grand prize of FDH Kukonza Tsogolo promotion, is a 70-year-old very small scale business lady,  who survive in selling bananas fritters (zitumbuwa) in Chiradzulu.

This was discovered at FDH Head offices in Blantyre on Thursday during the official hand over of the cheque for the lucky winner, who uses FDH Chiradzulu Service Centre.

Nsope said she was very much excited for becoming the grand prize winner, saying didn’t expect that she might be the winner.

“I was surprised when I received a call from FDH Bank telling me that I’m the luckiest customer,” she said. “This money will really help me in terms of boosting my businesses and that of my children and grandchildren — who also run different businesses,” she said.

Nsope was picked on Tuesday as the grand prize winner while the monthly K1 million was won by James Chida to mark the close of the four-month promotion.

Each month, a lucky customer received K1 million, 10 went away with K100,000 while 50 other customers went away with two metres each of FDH Bank-branded cloth.

This translates into K9 million cash prize that were disbursed and 200 of the two metres of FDH Bank-branded cloth — making a total of 240 winners since the savings culture promotion was rolled out in June.

Other K1 million winners were were Sheriff Kamwendo in September; Alfred Lucius Makwasa in July and Emmanuel Manguwo in August.

At the handover ceremony, FDH Bank Plc Senior Manager-Personal and Business Banking, Maureen Nalikungwi said the Bank is committed to introduce more promotions for their customers as one way of strengthening their relationship.

Nalikungwi  expressed delight with the participation of customers in the promotion, which run for 4 months, saying it has been very successful beyond their expectations.

“We have been conducting various promotions and we experienced huge response but this promotion was one of its kind because within the short period there has been a tremendous achievement in terms of participation which shows that we have loyal customers.

“With this response, we are very much  encouraged and we’ll not stop here but rather come up with other promotions in order to keep our clients enjoying our services,” she said.

At the draw on Tuesday, FDH Bank’s Head of Personal & Business Banking, Kawawa Sapato said the promo, which was aimed at encouraging customers to embrace a financial saving culture, has truly reaped fruits as over 900 new accounts were opened during the four-month period.

To join the promotion, FDH Bank existing customers were encouraged to deposit K100,000 and keep it for a month while new clients were to open an account and also depositing keep for the same period the sum of not less than K100,000.

Sapato said it was pleasing that the promotion has achieved its intended objective, saying people are now embracing the saving culture, which he said was a positive financial style of investing for a rainy day such as buying assets or paying for children’s school fees and other expenses.

“We were very pleased with the response, both by current and new customers, and we encourage our customers to continue saving after the promotion,” he said while emphasizing that such a culture makes a huge difference in people’s financial status.

Going forward, Sapato said the Bank will look into other different initiatives to engage their customers on regular basis as part of appreciating them for doing business with FDB.

On innovations towards adding “excellent value to the customers’ lives”, FDH Bank are second to none as in August, they launched an exciting promotion in which its customers, who are paying for their shopping by swiping their ATM cards using the bank’s point of sale (PoS) gadgets, stand a chance of winning a 60-seconds shopping dash worth K300,000.

At its launch, four lucky customers captured swiping on the FDH Bank’s PoS were instant winners of the Swipe & Dash promotion and they ran around the shop picking up groceries they wanted — but none of them reached the K300,000 target.

FDH Bank’s Managing Director, Noel Mkulichi said the promotion — to run up to December — is a campaign to inculcate a cashless shopping in which two customers are set to win the K300,000 Swipe & Dash; four to win shopping vouchers worth K60,000 and four more to win fuel vouchers also worth K60,000.

The customers who swipe on the FDH Bank PoS, write their names and contacts at the back of the receipt and deposit it in a box placed at the exit of the supermarket, from which a draw which be made to identify the eight monthly winners.

Mkulichi maintained that this is one way of encouraging the customers to use digital platforms for their shopping and paying for other services, who have the FDH Bank PoS gadgets, adding that if Malawians embraced a cashless tradition, it would save the costs of replacing overused bank notes by the Reserve Bank of Malawi.