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In this interview, Peter Adejoh discusses how he surprised his missionary parents with his entrepreneurial instinct as an 8-year-old boy growing up in northern Nigeria. For the remainder of his primary school education, all the way to his years in the university, he never let go of industry and entrepreneurship. Over the last 12 years, he has invested across many sectors of the Nigerian economy with some of the businesses among the fastest-growing enterprises in the nation. He spoke with Jide Akintunde, Managing Editor, Financial Nigeria magazine.

Jide Akintunde (JA): You have an interesting background across information technology, the development sector, and banking and finance. Why have you opted for entrepreneurship and what are the businesses you have substantial investment stakes in?

Peter Adejoh (PA): My journey in entrepreneurship and investing has spanned over 30 years, even though I am only 40 years old. From as early as I can remember, my dream has always been to own successful businesses.

I fondly remember the first show of my entrepreneurial instinct. In 1988, I was an 8-year-old kid in primary three, living with my missionary parents in northern Nigeria. They were very charitable people. But I told my mother, of blessed memory now, to help me buy groceries during one of the festive periods, which would be sold to end-consumers by the kids that usually come to our home to receive gift items during such times. By helping to vend the groceries, the kids would also earn an income by sharing profit with me, I said. My parents were astonished at my idea but supported its execution. The profit I made was stuffed in my piggy bank.

During my secondary school days, I tried my hands in various business endeavours, including supplies to construction sites. My interest in real estate actually came from my admiration of construction sites and high-rise buildings.

After my SSCE exams, I got my first paid employment while waiting to gain admission into university. It was an internship in the Makurdi branch of one of the largest insurance companies in Nigeria. The branch manager mentored me, and I remain very grateful to him for the opportunity and the training. Thereafter, I got a job in a leading IT firm, which exposed me to the important role of technology and innovation in growing an enterprise.

I setup my first company when I entered the university in 2000 at the age of 20. The business focused on the supply of computer hardware and software as well as publishing. Very well, my first set of customers were my lecturers and fellow students. My development sector experience came from my engagement as a consultant for a community-based project in Benue State by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) in 2002. The profound benefit I got from the project was my exposure to more structure processes and systems.

Upon the completion of my NYSC programme in 2005, I had an 18 months’ stint at another leading IT firm as a Project Manager. We worked on a very large public project of digitalizing federal higher institutions across the country. The size of the project made an impression in me. I further gained experience working in First City Monument Bank Plc (FCMB) as a Relationship Manager in its Public Sector Group. The culture of excellence and prudence in my various companies today derived from my experience at FCMB. It was from the bank I finally made my exit from paid employment to start running by business in 2009.

The last 12 years has been an incredible journey. Like Facebook founder, Mark Zukerberg, said, “The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail.” I have enjoyed tremendous successes during this period while learning from my failures.

I started Camey & Rock Platform Group with a seed capital of a little over N10 million in 2009. “The Platform,” as we call the company for short, has experienced tremendous growth in banking, non-bank financial services, real estate, hospitality and investment management. We see all our subsidiary companies as growth platforms for our investors and other stakeholders.

Camey & Rock acquired a majority stake in Resort Savings & Loans Plc in 2019. The publicly quoted company on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), is one of the largest mortgage banks in Nigeria in terms of customer base, shareholders’ fund and market value. (The bank is currently valued at over N10 billion.)

We established Prime Luxury, a high-end real estate development company, in 2014. The company has project footprints in Abuja and Lagos, with its current portfolio of assets valued in excess of $200 million. Capitis Thrift & Credit is another company in the Group, established in June 2019, and arguably the fastest growing diversified micro-credit union in Nigeria with current balance sheet size of over N400 million.

Last year, we founded Plush Hotels, a luxury boutique hospitality brand. Our flagship hotel in Wuse, FCT, Abuja, is due to be opened for business in June 2021. We also recently acquired a controlling stake in a microfinance bank. When the ongoing regulatory reorganization is completed, we plan to unveil the brand in Q3 2021 as a technology bank.


Peter Adejoh on the front cover of Financial Nigeria magazine May 2021 edition

JA: That was astonishing. Why did you decide to broadly diversify your investment portfolio?

PA: A dictum by the legendary investor, Warren Buffet, which says “Never depend on single income. Make investment to create a second source,” is very instructive for me. I also decided to return to the proverbial drawing board after we suffered significant losses during the local contagion of the Global Finance Crisis (GFC) in 2008 – 2010. Prudent diversification became our overriding investment philosophy. We carefully identified key growth sectors for new entrants. Now, we want to be known as a reliable one-stop shop for financial services and a choice platform for investments.

The savvy investor is one with a well-diversified portfolio of investments.

JA: Resort Savings and Loans has a different kind of importance in your portfolio, being a public quoted company. How is the change in the ownership of the controlling stake of the company impacting its stakeholders?
 
PA: Our impact on the company since our acquisition of the controlling stake 18 months ago has been quite significant. Our execution of the project spanned over three years. We approached the Board of the primary mortgage institution in 2016 as we started to execute our vision of a one-stop-shop model in financial services. It was a very bold move by Camey & Rock, being somewhat a relatively young investment firm at the time. But I had already developed an appetite for big projects.

We got the regulatory nod from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in March 2018 to further engage with the Board and management of the bank. This gave us the impetus to further engage other key regulators like the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and the NSE. Since we closed the deal in Q4 2019, we have been injecting fresh capital into the bank. Our recapitalization programme and broader efforts to reposition the bank are geared towards improving efficiency in service delivery to customers as well as creation of value to the shareholders. This is a process that is on-going with guidance from regulators, but which has recorded some milestones.

Our strategy for Resort Savings & Loans is to create bespoke mortgage solutions, simplify access to housing finance and offer competitive pricing to aggressively expand our market share.

JA: Fintech is a growing investment theme and you have registered your presence in that space that is fast changing the traditional ways of delivering banking and payment services. What has been your experience in the industry?

PA: The Platform registered its footprint in the fintech space with our founding of Capitis Thrift & Credit in 2019. Perhaps you hesitated in your question in describing fintech as a disruptive innovation in banking and finance. But there is no question about it, Capitis was founded to be a financial market disruptor. We want to use technology to deliver financial access and inclusion to both the underserved and unserved market segments. We aim to expand our services across the African region.

Capitis is a diversified collective and contributory credit union and a financing platform for other entrepreneurs and professionals. We are organizing a pool of private funds for personal finance needs and entrepreneurial growth and development. The company has grown by over 800 per cent in less than two years as of December 2020 financial year end, offering bespoke collaborative financial services tailored towards meeting the funding needs of the members of the credit union.

In October 2020, Capitis became the first privately-owned, non-bank financial platform to be formally created as an element on the Integrated Personnel & Payroll Information System (IPPIS) platform of the federal government with a mandate of providing salary loans to public sector workers. Leveraging technology, and working with our partner banks, we are providing lending, cash management, payments, and leasing solutions to a well-diversified customer base.

Our goal in 2021 is to deepen our investment in technology to support our growth. We aim to expand our institutional partnership to the international development financiers looking to advance financial inclusion and make impact investments. Capitis is currently in the process of raising a Series A fund with its first private debt issuance to be subscribed to through private placement.

JA: Most businesses were hard-hit by the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. What are the lessons that you have learnt from the pandemic as an investor and a business leader, even though businesses and economies are expected to recover from the impacts of the pandemic this year?

PA: The biggest lesson I have learnt since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is to always prepare for economic downturns, which come at irregular intervals and brought about by diverse reasons. The mindset we have now is that this will not be the last downturn, and probably not the last pandemic.

Nobody saw the current pandemic coming when it did. Its impact has been devastating for lives and livelihood. 2020 started out as a very promising year for us as we were scaling up our real estate and finance businesses. By the time the pandemic struck, all our projections went out the window. This does not diminish the value of planning and making projections. But sometimes, we may be confronted by unforeseen risk events that may be immensely disruptive. At such times, it is safety and survival that come first.

The lessons we learnt from the GFC was very helpful. As we know that a growth cycle will inevitably end, it is also certain that a downturn will not last forever. This thinking helped us in taking a major decision on whether to downsize our workforce as revenues were severely dented last year amid the pandemic. We decided not to downsize; we resolved to pull through the crisis of frozen income together by earning a fraction of our salaries. This motivated our relatively young and vibrant staff, and we strategized on new investments to accelerate the rebound of our revenue after the lockdown and as early as possible during the anticipated economic recovery. Our investment decision in the real estate business during this extraordinary period has started to pay off.


Sitting from left: Morufat Shobanke-Ishola, Financial Controller; Peter Adejoh, Executive Chairman; Olufemi Autin, Chief Operating Officer;
(standing from left) Omoye Okoror, Head, Business Development; Juliet Eric-Obulo, Head, Corporate Services; and Queen Okafor, General Manager,
all of Camey & Rock Platform Group

JA: Do you have sleepless nights because of your vast and growing business empire? If not, why?

PA: Although my responsibilities as the head of our fast-growing organizations are quite demanding, I get enough sleep and find time to relax. For me, it is also important to strike the right balance between work and family.

It might be a cliché, but it is true the saying that “health is wealth.” I try to maintain healthy habits and I play lawn tennis at my leisure time to maintain fitness.

JA: Apart from investing and making money, what else are important to you?

PA: Devotion to God and family is important to me. I place a very high premium on family. I have a Godly heritage from my parents. In line with my appreciation for their charitable deeds, I am currently working on the establishment of my foundation, which will focus on interventions in entrepreneurship, education, and health.

JA: Thoughts are emerging that this may be a “lost decade” for Africa in terms of achieving development – because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the brewing public debt crisis. What is your outlook of Nigeria and Africa with regard to investment, and in achieving the set global development targets for 2030?

PA: Africa has been hard hit by the economic impact of COVID-19, but happily we seem to have escaped its high human cost. You are right, the pandemic has exacerbated the debt crisis. In Nigeria, government’s revenue fell to a historical low in 2020 as the price of crude oil crashed to about $20 per barrel, forcing the government to accumulate more debt – which, in this instance, was important to end the recession of last year as soon as possible. This was achieved as the economy returned to growth in Q4 2020.

But, like most countries, we are not out of the woods yet. Most developing economies are seeing their currencies weakening against the US dollar, which will make the value of their dollar debt increase in their local currencies. But I am optimistic that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

For Nigeria in particular, we have to see the cost of governance come down. This is the leeway I see for us to be able to invest in the critical sectors including healthcare and to meet the existing debt service obligations. I think the CBN Governor has done a good job so far in supporting the economic recovery. But much more needs to be done in the fiscal area to reflate the economy.