By Wallace Mawire.
Harare, Zimbabwe. (news Of The South) – Zimbabwe’s FBC Group has invested over $1 million in compliance related technology in order to maintain its correspondent banking relationships and will continue to invest in this critical area, according to John Mushayavanhu, FBC CEO in a trading update to shareholders.
Mushayavanhu said that FBC Holdings has over the past five years aggressively promoted the adoption of e-commerce business practices and invested in e-commerce driven distribution channels.
“This investment is now coming in handy given the current cash crisis. To make it more convenient for our customers to transact without using cash, we have increased the number of FBC Point Of Sale (POS) machines in the market, continued to encourage our customers to use our Mobile App, Mobile Moola and internet banking to make payments and reduced the cost of POS transactions and Real-time Gross Settlement Systems ( RTGS) payments” Mushayavanhu said.
He added that as a result, FBC holdings has witnessed a massive increase in the number of POS, RTGS, Internet and Mobile money transactions by their customers significantly reducing the demand for cash.
“All our subsidiaries continue to expand their presence in e-commerce distribution channels, and this will be a key revenue driver for the bank, particularly in the current economic circumstances,” Mushayavanhu said.
He added that anti money laundering compliance and anti money laundering issues have become the biggest threat to banks in Zimbabwe as they affect banks’ ability to do cross border payments and correspondent banking.
“You are no doubt aware that banks such as Commerz Bank have stopped doing correspondent banking in Zimbabwe and the country has to up the game on anti-money laundering issues or else we face the risk of financial abandonment by the major US dollar clearing banks,’ he said.
Mushayavanhu added that FBC bank has also seen rapid transaction growth especially in the area of mobile and online transactions.
“We are currently assessing the impact of the recent wholesale reduction in charges as announced by the central bank and implemented two weeks ago, but we believe that this will be mitigated by an increase in transaction volumes,” he said.
He added that all subsidiaries are of FBC holdings are now compliant with minimum capital requirements and FBC Bank is on course to achieve its 2020 recapitalization targets as per the
recapitalization plan approved by Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ).
“ We are exploring various initiatives to accelerate the bank’s recapitalization plan in order to
defend FBC Bank’s market positioning and we intend to leverage on the brand and creditworthiness of FBC Holdings in our effort to achieve this,’ Mushayavanhu said.
FBC Holdings Limited (FBCH) is an investment holding company listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) whose principal activities are in Zimbabwe. The Group offers diverse financial services through subsidiaries that span commercial banking, mortgage financing, short-term insurance, re-insurance, securities trading and micro financing. In all, FBC Holdings Group comprises FBC Bank Limited, FBC Building Society, FBC Reinsurance, FBC Securities (Private) Limited, Eagle Insurance Company Limited, and MicroPlan Financial Services (Private) Limited.
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