
First Bank: HR at national scale for Nigeria's oldest bank
First Bank of Nigeria, with a heritage dating back to 1894 and one of the largest branch networks in West Africa, runs its people operations on Xceed365HR: payroll, core HR services, performance and talent management for a workforce of over 15,000 employees nationwide.
The Challenge
Few HR estates in Africa are as demanding as a tier-one Nigerian bank. First Bank's workforce of over 15,000 employees spans hundreds of branches and business offices across every region of Nigeria, supported by head-office functions in Lagos. At that scale, fragmented systems create real risk: payroll variances multiply, employee records drift out of sync between locations, and running consistent performance and talent cycles across regions becomes a months-long manual exercise.
The bank needed one platform that could pay everyone accurately every month, keep a single employee record across the network, and give leadership a dependable view of performance and talent, without adding administrative headcount.
The Solution
First Bank runs four pillars of its HR operations on Xceed365HR: payroll on XceedPay, core HR services on XceedCore, and performance and talent management on XceedGrow, all sharing one employee record and one security model.
In daily use across the bank:
- Payroll at scale: a single monthly run for 15,000+ employees, gross-to-net with Nigerian statutory deductions handled automatically.
- Core HR services: one employee record, self-service and approvals for a workforce spread across hundreds of locations.
- Performance management: unified objective-setting and appraisal cycles across all regions and grades.
- Talent management: talent reviews and succession planning built on live workforce data.
The Results
Xceed365HR gives First Bank one dependable platform for its entire employee lifecycle:
- 15,000+ employees paid from a single monthly payroll run
- One employee record across hundreds of branches nationwide
- Consistent performance and talent cycles across every region
- Statutory obligations met on schedule, month after month
Running payroll, core HR, performance and talent on one platform lets First Bank's HR team focus on the strategic work of one of Africa's most storied institutions.



