AFRICAN Bank Group lifted taxed profit by 145 percent to R372 million in the six months to March 31, while moving ahead with a range of new initiatives to improve service in a period that had been a difficult time for many businesses.
“This is a clear indication that the bank’s strong balance sheet, driven by its Excelerate25 strategy and new brand repositioning, is proving successful,” African Bank group CEO Kennedy Bungane said yesterday.
He said the results indicated that the bank’s five sustainability levers were producing the desired growth. The levers include customer satisfaction, social responsibility, financial resilience, inclusivity, and environmental protection.
“We are well poised to continue along this positive path,” he said.
Bungane said this path was informed by African Bank’s heritage – it was created by pioneers such as Dr Sam Motsuenyane and Dr Richard Maponya who, with a meagre starting point of R70, set out to level the economic playing field and “create a bank for the people, by the people, serving the people”.
“Our call to all customers is to be relentless and to go after what they believe in, knowing they have access to a bank that will look to support them,” he said.
In the 2021 SA Customer Satisfaction Index announced in March 2022, African Bank scooped the overall leader position in customer satisfaction, performing significantly better than the industry average and convincingly taking leader positions in six of the nine survey segments.
“Our customers are at the centre of everything we do. These results reinforce this. Our renewed focus is both on retail and business banking customers. We will continue to build on our customer development journey,” he said.
Improved profitability was also due to increased income earned on loan disbursements, which were up by 89 percent to R6.35bn.
Lower impairments were recorded. African Bank’s retail banking offering had been expanded, with MyWORLD providing a wider range of products and value-added services. Group operating costs were stable, even with the increase in business activity across the business units.
The balance sheet remained liquid with strong available cash resources of R4.8bn.
The capital adequacy ratio, which measures the ability of the group to protect itself against untoward events which arise due to lower liquidity levels, and is monitored closely by the regulator of banks, the Prudential Authority, improved to 45.8 percent from 43.6 percent.
Looking ahead, Bungane said that they remained customer and data focused. The ongoing development of African Bank’s business banking division would continue, such that the bank was able to assist with finance to small and developing businesses.
It was also moving towards an integrated digitisation approach and was realigning IT systems strategy towards new business needs. A new front line sales programme was also in the pipeline.
BUSINESS REPORT ONLINE