By Almot Maqolo.
HARARE – (News of The South) – Steward Bank’s restated profit before tax for the six months ended 31 August 2019 declined by 60.97% from ZWL51.4 million in the previous period to ZWL20.1 million owing to an increase in inflation adjusted operating expenses.
In the period, net operating income increased marginally to ZWL133 million from ZWL132 million during the same period last year. But, there were no material changes to the Bank’s inflation adjusted balance sheet as most assets are monetary in nature.
Late last year, the bank launched the *236# Digital Account Opening Platform with a bid to promote financial inclusion, value creation and retaining its position as a market leader in innovation. Since launch, the bank has on-boarded over 1 million customers through the platform.
“Furthermore, 536 000 microloans have been disbursed digitally through the Kashagi product,” chairman Bernard Chidzero said in a statement accompanying the results. The number of customer accounts amounted to 1.8 million, with 350 000 more customers being added to the “purple family”.
As expected due to the inflationary pressures in the market, operating expenditure was up 78.48% to ZWL117.27 million from ZWL65.7 million in the same period last year. Total comprehensive income declined from ZWL31.43 million in the prior period last year to ZWL14.37 million.
The bank has embarked on a project to upgrade its core banking system and infrastructure. However, full implementation and benefits of this project will be realized in Q3 FY2021.
To improve the efficiency and quality of service to its customers, the bank will continue to use artificial intelligence.
“As we continue to explore the use of this modern technology in our business, we are confident that we will emerge as the front runner in customer experience and service delivery in the financial service industry.”
As the country is experiencing unprecedented power shortages and in line with bank’s mandate to provide relevant solutions to the market, it has made a strategic shift to increase lending activities to the sector through a partnership with Distributed Power Africa (DPA) to fund renewable energy projects.
Comments
About Author
