National Bank of Malawi (NBM) has new plans for its newly acquired Inde Bank for both growth and new services.
On Thursday, NBM bought both Malawi Government and ADMARC shares in Inde Bank to a tune of KK4.7 billion representing 67% of shares would use K1.6 billion for regulatory requirement for the recapitalization and this sums to K6.3 billion. The signing agreement took place at the Capital Hill where Minister of Finance Goodall Gondwe signed the deal on behalf of Malawi Government and Mr. George Partridge signed on behalf of NBM.
At the same event government also signed the sale of Malawi Savings Bank (MSB) where Minister of Finance signed on behalf of Government while Dr. Thom Mpinganjira signed on behalf of FDH Holdings
In an interview, NBM Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mr. George Partridge says NBM had due diligence when placing bid and that after acquiring the bank NBM would look further at how they can do with the bank.
Partridge then said among others, NMB is ready to use its new subsidiary to offer other products that are not offered by Malawi banks. He said NBM will use Inde Bank to utilize offers from Development Banks lines of credits to service Malawians as National Bank is failing to provide them due to its commercial license.
He also indicated that NBM bought the shares to take over the bank so that they can manage it in such a way that it starts to make profits again to prevent systemic risk to the finance system.
“After such long process the anxiety are now over and we can now move ahead and reorganize and restructure Inde Bank into a bank which we would like it to be” He said, “at the moment the bank is a loss making and failing to meet some of the regulatory requirement of the registrar (Reserve Bank) and one of the things is to recapitalize the bank so that it abides to RBM requirement.”
The NBM CEO assured; “We think we can turnaround the bank. We have strategies to turnaround that bank to be profit making bank once again”
He then explained; “We have seen that there are things that need to be done right in that bank and we think that we have ability to do that. We have demonstrated ourselves that we are making profits because of what we are doing. So if we apply the same methods and systems that we have to Inde bank we think we can turnaround Inde Bank, there is no reason why Inde Bank should be making losses.”
NBM has bought Malawi Government and ADMARC shares and will pay the money this week and the part of the money will be used for the recapitalization of the bank since the bank is undercapitalized.
