NBS Bank posts profit, turnaround on track
The fruits of human capital investment and partnership seem to have paid off at the Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE)-listed NBS Bank plc as it has posted a K479 million half-year profit, after two years of losses.
The bank has been on a recruitment drive and training of its staff and also partnered Rabobank—a technical partner from The Netherlands.
In its published financial statements, NBS Bank said its profit-after-tax has jumped from a loss of K1.1 billion during the same period last year.
This position was boosted by effective management of interest expenses and investments in the first six months and a growth in net interest income of 84 percent when compared to the same period in 2017, according to financial results co-signed by board chairperson Vizenge Kumwenda.
The bank’s partnership with Rabobank of The Netherlands continues to bear fruit and there are numerous projects that have been implemented this far as a result.
“We are pleased to report that the bank’s customer onboarding process is now fully automated,” reads the statement in part.
“In addition, our credit and operations processes were revised. It is expected that NBS Bank will continue to implement the improved processes in the second half of 2018.”
NBS Bank said it continued to focus on growing transaction business through a variety of digitised payment solutions and also addressed systems and process issues that had previously affected revenue collection.
“The bank continued to implement cost optimisation measures to further improve its cost-to-income ratios. The bank also registered a 19 percent growth in customer deposits during the six months under review,” reads the statement.
Loans and advances registered an increase of five percent as the bank continued to “cautiously grow while implementing a process review and re-engineering its lending strategy in the first half of the year”.
Despite the turnaround that has changed the narrative on the health of the financial institution, it has not recommended payment of dividend to enable full turnaround of the business this year.
