First HoldCo Plc has appointed Gwen Mwaba as a non-executive director, in a corporate disclosure filed with the Nigerian Exchange Limited on 22 October 2026 and signed by group company secretary Abiola Baruwa.
The appointment took effect on the fifteenth of October, following approval by the Central Bank of Nigeria. First HoldCo, the Lagos-listed financial services holding company that until this year traded as FBN Holdings Plc, has been reshaping its board as it draws a sharper line between group governance and the banking subsidiary it controls.
Mwaba arrives from the African Export-Import Bank, where she was managing director for trade finance and correspondent banking, based in Cairo. In that role she carried responsibility for an exposure portfolio of about 19.5 billion dollars, one of the larger trade finance books on the continent. She joined the bank in 2015 as regional manager for anglophone West Africa and head of its Abuja branch office, and was later promoted to run trade finance from that regional base.
Before that her career was in commercial and structured lending. She was executive vice president for structured trade and commodity finance at Standard Bank Group in London, and held earlier senior roles with the group's Zambian and South African operations. She is Zambian, and has worked in global banking and development finance for close to three decades.
Her qualifications sit on the accounting side rather than the markets side. She holds a master of business administration from Heriot-Watt University and a bachelor of science in applied accounting from Oxford Brookes University, and she is a fellow chartered certified accountant.
The seat also brings a policy network with it. Mwaba has served on the editorial board of a trade finance trade title, sat on an advisory panel for multilateral institutions convened by the trade and forfaiting industry body, and was a member of a World Trade Organization expert group on trade finance.
For First HoldCo the appointment adds balance-sheet and correspondent-banking experience at a point when access to international counterparties is a live constraint for Nigerian lenders. Correspondent relationships determine how cheaply a bank can clear dollars and confirm letters of credit, and they have tightened across much of West Africa as global banks have narrowed their appetite for the region. A director who has spent a decade on the multilateral side of exactly those relationships, deciding which African banks to take risk on, is an unusual addition to a Nigerian holding company board and a pointed one.
The disclosure gives no indication of further board changes, and names no outgoing director in connection with the appointment.
