The African Banker of the Year award puts a spotlight on a bigger story of how Sierra Leone’s indigenous bank moved from protecting its balance sheet to financing an economy
On 21 August, Dr Walton Ekundayo Gilpin walked onto the stage at the London Hilton Kensington to receive the African Banker of the Year 2026 award to a thunderous applause for the banker.
Back home in Sierra Leone, however, there was another story worth telling. It was the story of a bank.
Rokel Commercial Bank had spent years changing the way it saw itself, the way it served its customers and, probably most importantly, the way it used the money entrusted to it.
There have been many awards over the years, and as journalists we sometimes jokingly compare the RCBank Managing Director and the ACC Commissioner over who has collected the most. With awards coming so frequently, they can begin to lose some of their shine. However, The African Banker award arrived at a different point in Gilpin’s journey. It recognised his leadership, but it also put a spotlight on an institution that has gone through substantial change under his watch.
To understand that transformation, it helps to go back to 2017, when Gilpin assumed leadership of the bank.
RCBank had deposits of about NLe770.1 million, but its loan book stood at only NLe82.1 million. For Gilpin, the numbers revealed a fundamental problem. The bank was good at attracting deposits, but it was far less effective at turning those deposits into credit for businesses and households.
“That was the single biggest constraint,” he says in an exclusive interview with Ticha Lemp Lemp.
There were other weaknesses. The capital base needed strengthening. Risk management and credit underwriting required improvement. The bank’s physical network and digital capabilities had fallen behind where its customers and the market were heading.
Gilpin’s first task, therefore, was not to chase spectacular growth. It was to rebuild the foundations.
Governance, credit risk management and capital adequacy had to be strengthened. The bank had to become more willing to lend, but with systems capable of managing the risks that come with lending. Work also had to begin on the digital infrastructure that would eventually become SimKorpor.
Eight years later, the numbers tell a very different story.
RCBank’s total assets had grown from NLe877 million in 2017 to NLe5.6 billion in 2025, according to the bank’s records. Deposits rose from NLe770.1 million to NLe4.15 billion, while loans and advances climbed from NLe82.1 million to NLe1.24 billion. Profit before tax increased from NLe62.7 million to NLe338.1 million over the same period.
The loan book had grown by roughly fifteen times, but Gilpin’s explanation of that growth is probably more revealing than the number itself.
He says the bank deliberately moved away from a deposit-heavy, conservative model towards active lending, while strengthening capital and risk management at the same time.
That distinction is important because banking growth can be bought at a price. A bank can push money out of the door quickly and celebrate the growth of its loan book, only to discover later that some of those loans cannot be recovered. Gilpin says that was never the intention at RCBank.
The bank diversified its lending across sectors and customer groups, including small and medium-sized enterprises, while rebuilding its credit assessment and monitoring systems. Its digital platforms also began providing greater visibility into customer transactions, helping the bank assess and monitor credit.
Even after the expansion, Gilpin points out that the bank’s loan-to-deposit ratio was around 30 percent at the end of 2025.
His argument is that the bank still had considerable liquidity headroom and that the growth in lending had been controlled rather than reckless. Operating capital also increased substantially during the period, from approximately Le91 billion to Le271 billion. That is the less visible side of a banking transformation.
Before the digital platform, before the new branches and before the international award, there had to be controls, capital, credit committees and systems capable of carrying the weight of a larger institution.
Gilpin’s philosophy is straightforward. Money deposited with a bank is held in trust. The confidence of Sierra Leoneans, he says, has to be protected while the institution grows.
But there was another investment taking place, one that does not appear immediately in the balance sheet. It is human capital development; the staff.
Gilpin notes that RCBank embarked on what he describes as massive training of its staff across the different facets of modern banking. That was an important part of the transformation.
New banking systems require people who understand them. A bank moving into digital services, stronger risk management, new financial products and a more competitive operating environment needs staff capable of working at that level. Training therefore became part of the institutional change rather than an activity sitting on the side.
I also remember another part of that period. The transformation was not without turbulence.
I was President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists at the time, and Gilpin approached me when a stream of negative reports about his leadership and activities at RCBank had begun appearing in sections of the press. The reports were connected to what appeared to be serious internal disagreements at the bank, and some of the claims had taken on a political colour.
Gilpin was concerned enough about the effect of the coverage to seek my intervention with some of the journalists involved.
I recall this because institutional transformation is rarely as neat as the figures eventually make it look. I saw only one part of that episode, and I cannot speak to the competing claims about what was happening inside the institution. What I do know is that the media pressure was real, it was uncomfortable, and it was part of the environment in which Gilpin was trying to change the bank.
Choosing both the branch and the phone
One of the more interesting choices in the RCBank transformation was its decision to expand in two directions at once.
It built its digital banking platform while also expanding its physical network.
That may sound contradictory at a time when banks in many parts of the world are closing branches and pushing customers towards mobile applications.
For Sierra Leone, Gilpin sees it differently. The country’s banking customers do not all live in the same technological world. Some are perfectly comfortable using a mobile phone for almost everything. Others live in places where connectivity and smartphone access remain limited. A customer may happily use SimKorpor for everyday transactions and still want to sit across a desk when seeking a loan or resolving a complicated problem.
So RCBank opened branches in places such as Cline Town and Waterloo while continuing to build SimKorpor.
The branch and the mobile phone are serving different parts of the same banking relationship. That thinking becomes clearer when looking at what SimKorpor has done outside Freetown.
For customers in remote communities, digital banking can remove a very practical obstacle of distance. A customer should not have to spend hours travelling, and potentially lose a day’s income, just to check an account, transfer money or pay a bill.
RCBank has also moved digital banking into everyday services. Its partnership with the Sierra Leone Water Company (SALWACO) allows customers to pay water bills digitally through SimKorpor, while work continues on electricity token vending. The platform is integrated into the national switch and connects with mobile-money and wallet services, allowing customers to move money across financial service providers.
That is where the digital transformation extends far beyond banking convenience. It becomes infrastructure. The technology is useful because it reduces the distance between the customer and the service.
The question of ownership
RCBank’s identity as a Sierra Leonean-owned institution is central to Gilpin’s argument about its future. He believes local ownership creates a different relationship with the economy.
A bank whose fortunes are closely tied to the country has an incentive to understand the peculiarities of that country, from the customer who does not own a smartphone to the small business that needs working capital.
He points to the decision to design SimKorpor for people without smartphones and the partnership with SALWACO as examples of decisions shaped by local realities rather than a standard product model designed somewhere else.
However, that does not mean he dismisses foreign investment. Capital, technology and expertise from outside Sierra Leone have their place, he accepts.
But Gilpin’s argument is that local ownership gives RCBank a different horizon. Its long-term interests are tied to financial inclusion, SME growth and the strength of the domestic financial system.
That idea will be tested as the bank begins looking beyond Sierra Leone.
The UTB test
Possibly the clearest test of how much RCBank has changed came this year.
In June 2026, the bank completed the transfer of the viable business of Union Trust Bank (UTB) under the Bank of Sierra Leone’s Purchase and Assumption framework.
For an institution already undergoing expansion, this was a serious operational undertaking. Balance sheets had to be consolidated. Banking systems had to be migrated. Staff had to be realigned. Customers had to continue receiving services while the integration was taking place. All of this had to happen while RCBank continued running its own business.
Gilpin says the experience taught the bank something important; that transactions of this nature test governance and operational discipline as much as strategy.
Communication with staff and customers, coordination with the regulator and the willingness to move carefully were crucial.
The significance of the transaction goes beyond the additional customers and branches.
Gilpin sees it as a vote of confidence in RCBank’s financial capacity, governance, technology and human resources. He also sees consolidation as part of a broader effort to strengthen stability in the banking sector.
For RCBank, the transaction has increased its scale. For the industry, it raises another issue; whether Sierra Leone’s banks are developing the institutional strength required to handle a more competitive and increasingly interconnected financial market.
From Sierra Leone to West Africa
The award in London came at another interesting moment in Gilpin’s career.
In May, he was appointed Vice President I of the West African Bankers’ Association, giving him a regional platform from which to engage with issues affecting banking, regulation, payments and financial integration across West Africa.
RCBank is also looking towards Liberia. Gilpin describes the ambition as real, but measured.
The logic is that the institution has spent years developing a model at home that combines physical banking, digital services, stronger risk management and broader financial inclusion. Regional payment initiatives such as the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System are also making cross-border transactions increasingly practical.
The ambition, he says, is eventually to become a genuinely regional West African institution while remaining firmly rooted in Sierra Leone.
That will be a different test from the one RCBank has faced at home.
Growing a bank inside one market requires institutional discipline. Taking that institution across a border requires the ability to understand a different regulatory environment, customers, competitors and economic conditions without losing the qualities that made the original institution successful.
The bank’s actual contribution
There is a temptation when discussing banking success to stop at profits.
Gilpin argues that RCBank’s more important contribution has been financial intermediation; taking money mobilised from depositors and putting more of it into productive activity.
The increase in the loan book, he says, means capital reaching enterprises and households, supporting jobs and economic activity.
Then there is employment. RCBank now operates 18 branches and nine outlets, alongside its growing digital operation.
There is financial inclusion through digital banking, payments for essential services, and participation in government financing and the national payments system.
Additionally, there is something Gilpin says he has taken personally; financial literacy.
He has lectured at schools and universities and used television, radio and community engagements to discuss financial matters.
His reasoning is worth noting. Having a bank account or a digital wallet does not automatically make somebody financially included. People need to understand how financial products work and how to use them responsibly.
That brings us back to the award. The African Banker of the Year recognition is definitely about Gilpin. However, his own account of the journey keeps returning to the institution and the people around it.
In his public comments after receiving the honour, he described the achievement as the result of the work of his team and linked the bank’s transformation to financial inclusion, digital services and support for SMEs.
That is fitting because the RCBank of 2017 and the RCBank of 2026 are difficult to describe as the same institution.
Gilpin describes the old RCBank as an institution focused on preserving what it had. It was cautious about deploying deposits, with a modest physical network and limited digital capability.
The institution he leads today, he says, has multiplied its assets more than six-fold, deposits more than five-fold and its loan book more than fifteen-fold. It has 18 branches, nine outlets, a national digital platform, has taken on the viable business of another bank and is considering expansion into Liberia.
His own description of the change is probably very easy to understand: RCBank has moved from “balance-sheet preservation to national, and increasingly regional, economic participation.”
That is what makes the London award worth looking beyond. Awards come and go, and the trophy will eventually sit on his table or a shelf. The harder part begins after the applause.
RCBank now has to prove sustainability; that the systems, people and discipline built during the transformation can carry the institution into its next phase.
For now, the award gives Gilpin, his team and Sierra Leone something to celebrate. However, underneath the certificate and trophy is a more consequential achievement. A bank that once held most of its customers’ money has spent eight years learning how to put more of that money to work.
The next chapter will show how far that transformation can travel.
NOTE: The author is the Ex-Officio and Immediate Past President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), and Chairman of the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) Working Group on Climate Change.
