Bank posts $8 million profit
The Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Patrick Chinamasa has hailed the People’s Own Savings Bank (POSB) Zimbabwe for its sound financial status for the previous financial year.
By Lovejoy Mutongwiza
Speaking during the POSB Annual General Meeting (AGM), Minister Chinamasa said the bank has defied the harsh economic conditions and proved to be a good example of financial inclusion.
He said the bank has a good exchange branch network which makes it the best performing bank in the country.
“I’m happy to note that in 2014 you made very small profits but you however continued to work hard to be in a more favorable financial position by the end of your 2015 financial year.
“This has seen you become the best performing bank with a good cooperate governance.
“I’m also happy at how you have shown transparency and accountability through the financial reports that you have presented.”
Chinamasa’s comments came after the Chief Executive Officer, Admore Kandlela, had presented the financial statements where he revealed the bank recorded a profit of $7.91 million, a significant improvement from a profit of $1.25 million recorded during the same period in 2014.
Kandlela said this was largely due to business growth in terms of effective utilization of existing products as well as introduction of new products and delivery channel.
“The bank continues to be aggressive in deposit mobilization and business development with emphasis being more on the mass market and the small to medium enterprise.”
“We also have a line of products that we want to put into the market, products that are techno-survey, products that are too digital,
“We are currently networked with all the three network providers where our clients will use any one of those in the banking platforms.” He said.
POSB received capital injection worth $12 million in form of 10 year treasury bills with a maturity value of $20 million during the period December 2014 to December 2015. The capital injection enhanced the bank’s capital position which saw capital adequacy position improve from 12.86% in 2014 to 22.27% in 2015.
The CEO claimed the demonetization of the Zimbabwean dollar which was undertaken by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe also assisted in enhancing customer and business confidence by providing credibility to the multi-currency system.
Said Kandlela, “the Bank expects themselves to be 100% when it comes to perfection of cooperate governance. He however alluded that issues like in house corruption affect they target but vowed to clean up so that by the end of the current financial year, they would have achieved their target.
“We have actually set up a committee that deals with in house corruption, so we promise that by the end of this financial year, we would have achieved 100% good cooperate governance. We urge all our employees to stick to ethos of good governance, that way we can be a reputable banking institution”
Apart from that, POSB launched a number of new products and services which include the mobile application, sponsor bank arrangement, instant banking products and mortgage financing.
