Diamond Bank Plc, a company quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has stated its readiness to create employment through empowering the entrepreneurs with capital to boost their businesses.

Diamond Bank share is currently attracting investors’ interest at the stock market with the company’s  share price currently among the top seven equities in the Banking sub sector. It closed N7.35 per share even as the yuletide gets closer.

Speaking recently to newsmen on the bank’s drive to promote entrepreneurship through its SavingsXtra Mr. Garry Marsh, the bank’s Senior Advisor, Retail Banking, said, this Season 3, Diamond Bank is giving away N500million in cash for the  rewards which will last till the next 11 months.

According to  Marsh “ the bank’s existing and new customers only need a SavingsXtra account and will need to maintain a balance of at least N5, 000 to qualify automatically for the draw. Every additional N5,000 held will add one more chance – so a customer with a balance of N100, 000 will get 20 opportunities in every draw that takes places.”

A breakdown of prizes to be won in the monthly and weekly draws shows that one customer will win the star prize of Salary 4Life each month.

In all, there will be 12 Salary 4 Life prizes to be won till August 2011. Other prizes include N5 million for one customer monthly, N2.5 million for another customer monthly and N500,000 each for 10
customers every week.

In addition to the monthly and weekly prizes, SavingsXtra customers also benefit from a free life assurance cover worth N50,000 and can also apply for a SavingsXtra VISA credit card which entitles them to access to credit up to 75 per cent of their cash balance. With the VISA card, customers can buy anything anywhere in the world and pay in naira.

Meanwhile, some of the lucky winners to the draw that bears their minds saying the bank’s gesture will turn their life.
According to one of them, Mr. Princewill Aguta, a roadside welder at Orji, a suburb of Owerri, the Imo State capital when he set up his workshop some years ago, he had high hopes of that he would make money and become as rich as his boss, the man who taught him the trade.

That day finally came on November 1, 2010. He was in his shop putting finishing touches to a job when he received a call. The caller introduced himself as a staff of Diamond Bank and congratulated him for emerging the October winner of Salary for Life, the star prize of the Diamond Bank monthly SavingsXtra reward.

This means that Aguta will be paid N100,000 every month for the next20 years.

It would be recalled in Season 1, Mr. James Umaru Umbugadu, a civil servant in Lafia,         Nassarawa State and Ms. Habiba Mona Saliu, then a 100_level Language and Linguistics student in University of Maiduguri won the then star prize of N50million. Umbugadu was the first person to be presented with the rewards’ then N50million star prize cheque in January 2009. Umbugadu planned gradual disengagement from the civil service business and had been making miserly savings with a view to building a decent bungalow in a Lafia suburb.