LIVINGSTONE MARUFU
Financial services group, NMBZ Holdings Limited, says it will push to rake in foreign currency revenues as part of efforts to hedge against rising local currency exposures.
The group’s CEO, Gerald Gore disclosed the plan saying value preservation remained key in managing the impact of volatility in the market.
The push to get more forex revenues comes at a time the fragile Zimbabwean economy is grappling with a depreciating local currency against all major currencies.
“The focus for the bank has been on growing foreign currency denominated income both on interest and non-interest income. We are focusing on key export sectors such as horticulture, agriculture, mining and manufacturing,” Gore said.
The group’s profit in the six months to June 30, 2022 grew to ZWL$1.7bn from ZWL$715m achieved in the prior comparative period.
Total assets for the group increased by 8.01% to close the period at ZWL$69.41bn from ZWL$64.26bn reported in the same period last year.
Loans and advances closed the period at ZWL$22.83bn, up 4.34% from December 2021 levels.
Gore said the group continued to take a measured approach to risk, as evidenced by the strong asset quality with a non-performing loans ratio of 1.22% compared to 1.39% as at December 31 2021.
The net charge for expected credit losses was ZWL$259m for the period under review.
Deposits and other liabilities grew by 4.47% from December 2021 levels and this was largely reflecting the impact of the exchange rate depreciation on US$ deposits.
Gore said the group would push digitisation initiatives to reduce costs while increasing efficiencies.
As a result, he said the group was building a digital bank which should be able to serve anyone within its borders.
“Over the last two and half years, we have managed to build the technological capabilities to support the digital bank. We have already digitised most of the customer journeys such as the customer on-boarding process, card issuance, cash handling processes to name a few,” Gore said.
He said the digital transformation also touched on own internal processes in order to match the experience it is giving customers.
“We have adopted robotic process automation to support backend processes. The bank has gone paperless,” Gore said.
He said NMB has invested heavily in cyber-security to ensure its platforms are secure.
The bank, Gore said, was well capitalised at 22.28% capital adequacy ratio. Risk weighted assets stood at ZWL$58.26bn in the reviewed period, reflecting a 10.15% increase from December 2021 levels.
The liquidity ratio was healthy at 46% compared to the regulatory requirement of 30%.
