Dashen Bank, one of the pioneers of private commercial banks, overhauled its organisational structure by broadening its top level management team, as of January 1, 2019.

The new restructuring brings seven chief and two deputy-chief officers operating under the president. The nine chief offices are divided into three: front, middle and back office. In the former structure, four vice presidents served under the president.

The reorganisation has also increased the number of directors to 25, adding five new director posts from the former structure.

“The change in structure is necessitated by the paradigm shift made in the Bank's strategy,” said Mulugeta Alebachew, marketing & corporate communications manager of Dashen, which netted 904.3 million Br in profit last financial year.

Last year, Dashen hired KPMG East Africa to formulate a management strategy for the Bank. Along with formulating a decade-long strategic road map, KPMG developed a one-year operational plan, a five-year strategic plan and designed an organisational structure, as well as supporting the Bank in the implementation of the performance management system.

The Bank has set aside 40 million Br for the design and implementation of the strategic plan, which took about 10 months to be formulated.

Adopting the new organisational structure has elevated Dashen to become the third largest private bank behind Awash and the Bank of Abyssinia. The state giant, Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, has adopted the same organisational structure.

Bank of Abyssinia pioneered the practice in 2015 by hiring Deloitte Consulting Plc, and then Awash followed the next year awarding KPMG a contract to develop a new strategic management plan. United and Nib banks have already hired Deloitte and KPMG, respectively, to get their management strategies in line with the other banks.

Aligning with the new structure, Dashen has appointed executives for various posts at the beginning of this month. Three out of the four vice presidents of the bank have already been assigned as chief officers, while Samuel Adane, VP for Marketing & business development, has been appointed as an adviser to the CEO.

Yared Mesfin, Chief Corporate Banking Officer; Henok Kebede, Chief Shared Service & Central Processing Officer; and Shimeles Legesse, Chief Information Officer, maintained their current posts.