Barclays celebrates 45 years of service in Seychelles-Barclays Bank (Seychelles) is Friday August 20 celebrating its 45 years of operations in the country |20 August 2004

Sir Peter, who is on a four-country tour, will also be visiting Mauritius, South Africa and Kenya. Thursday August 19 the chairman and his wife made donations of cheques to the Les Li Viv organisation and the Biodiversity Centre at Barbarons.

The highlight of activities being organised to mark the event is a gala dinner to take place  Friday evening at the Plantation Club where Barclays will award over 20 staff with over 25 years of service. Eight of the staff have been with the bank for over 30 years.

Barclays was the first bank to start a banking operation in Seychelles with the opening of the first Mahe branch in the building now occupied by the Supreme Court on Independence Avenue. The branch was administered from the Bank's regional head office in Mombasa, Tanzania, and run by a work force of four staff, all of whom were Seychellois.

Barclays remained the sole provider of banking services until 1969 with the arrival of Standard Chartered in the country. In the first 20 years of its operation, Barclays performed the function of the Government bank, handling payments and deposits.

From this modest beginning, Barclays has over the years expanded its operations through construction of its own premises across the three main islands. The bank is now spread out with branches in six different locations on Mahe, Praslin and La Digue with a total of 120 staff and serving a strong base of over 35,000 customers.

A major decision was taken in 1998 to incorporate Barclays into a company which is wholly owned by Barclays PLC, except for a 1% shareholding allocated to staff. Today the bank is run in its entirety by a team of dedicated Seychellois. The last position to be localised was that of the top post of managing director which was taken over by Mr Frank Hoareau.    

"The fortunes of Barclays have indeed grown with that of the country's economy," Mr Hoareau said.

"We provided financial services at a crucial time when Seychelles was fast developing into an open tourism based economy as opposed to one centred on agriculture," Mr Hoareau explained, adding that today the bank's involvement in the economy "contributes significantly towards inflows of foreign exchange in the country."

"We are now firmly entrenched in the financial sector of the country and given our leading position what we do helps underpin the economy," he said.

Over the years Barclays has made significant strides in the training and development of its staff and recruitment of qualified people to work for the organisation. 

"We have shown through this long history that we are truly committed to the development and success of the country and that we look forward to many more years of Barclays’ presence in Seychelles," Mr Hoareau said.

The bank has this year modified and created a simpler and more modern version of its brand, the eagle, and adopted the slogans Money Expertise and Fluent in Finance.

Barclays itself has been operating in Africa for over the last 100 years and provides banking services to personal and corporate customers in 12 countries in Africa as well as the Indian Ocean and Middle East. It has a total of 217 branches spread out in Africa and the Middle East, 1.4 million customer accounts, 246 automated teller machines, 54,000 telephone banking customers and a total number of 7,000 employees.