Turning The Tide For African Bank

Having recently taken the reins as CEO of African Bank, Basani Maluleke is heading up the strategy to diversify and de-risk the financial institution.

- Lloyd Gedye

Nearly four years after African Bank Investments (Abil) was placed under curatorship, the “good bank” that arose from that process is making steady progress to build its deposit base, improve the quality of its loan book and improve its digital offering.

The “good bank”, rebranded African Bank after it was spun out of the curatorship process, remains unlisted. The Reserve Bank owns 50%, the Government Employees Pension Fund 25%, and the big six banks – FirstRand, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank, Investec and Capitec – own the remaining 25% in various proportions. The “bad bank”, which remains in curatorship, is now known as Residual Debt Services.

At the helm of African Bank since April is Basani Maluleke, a trained accountant and former lawyer and investment banker. Maluleke, who originally joined the board as a non-executive director in 2015, served as operations head since July 2017 and can take some credit for the unsecured lender’s improving fortunes.

The bank reported an after-tax profit of R448m in the six months to end-March, up 42% from the same period ended March 2017. While it has been growing its loan book, write-offs of bad debts have dropped significantly, totaling about R1.9bn in the period under review (2017: R4.877bn). Its credit loss ratio improved to 11.1% from 13.8%. Retail deposits have grown by 90% to R680m, no doubt reeled in by the 10.5% interest on 60-month deposits.

De-risking the bank African Bank has also made progress in paying off longterm debt and luring depositors, which is important as a stronger deposit base will reduce its reliance on external funders, and can help lower its cost of debt. It believes its transactional offering, My World, which is set to be launched later this year, will help grow this base.