Stanbic Awarded Best Bank in Zambia
BY NATION REPORTER
Stanbic Bank has been awarded the Best Bank and Best Investment Bank in Zambia.
According to a statement from the bank, in selecting the winners, EMEA Finance stated that this year’s submissions demonstrate that adversity drives opportunity.
The African banking landscape continues to evolve at a lightning quick pace, the retail sector is in perpetual flux and corporate banking is looking more and more like retail with digital products and services coming to the fore with real time services a pre-requisite for retaining and winning new business.
And Stanbic Bank Chief Executive, Mr Mwindwa Siakalima in response to the two Awards thanked customers, staff and all enabling stakeholders for helping the Bank to achieve the exceptional recognition.
He noted that the Awards demonstrate Stanbic Bank’s deep knowledge of the business environment, financial resilience, response to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the ambitious Future Ready Transformation programme.
‘It is an honour to be awarded the Best Bank and Best Investment Bank in Zambia which we dedicate to our customers and our resilient staff. This year, similar to last year, we have had to navigate a very difficult operating environment. However, our commitment to driving Zambia’s growth, and our drive to win, has enabled us to overcome the obstacles we have faced and achieve these great wins’, said Mr Siakalima.
Mr Siakalima pointed out how the Covid-19 pandemic as a crisis galvanised the Bank to focus on delivering better solutions for customers in a complex environment.
Said Mr Siakalima, ‘Our support to customers has been truly human and truly digital. We stopped thinking products and aimed to provide complete solutions for our clients.’
‘We saw companies affected by the pandemic holding back on investments due to its impact on business. However, coming into 2021, we have seen business confidence gaining which has led to increased appetite for funding’, he noted.
He further went on to say ‘As a Bank, we ensured we stayed close to our customers, anticipated their challenges which are mainly cashflow related. To this end, we supported our customers through relief programmes which included capital repayment payment holidays as well as extension of tenor of facilities, and interest payment holidays in line with the Bank of Zambia moratorium guidelines.’
‘In addition, the Bank was able to access K1.35billion funding from the central bank under the Targeted Medium Term Refinancing Facility (TMTRF) to restructure or refinance qualifying facilities and also to on lend to eligible customers. This allowed us to pass on the reduced interest rate benefit to our customers who met the conditions under the TMTRF.’
‘Added to this, we have witnessed the rapid technological advances and it was imperative that we realign our operating model to respond to this shift. We are on a Future Ready Transformation journey for our staff that will create bespoke solutions for clients. The culture of our staff continue to play a huge role in our industry performance and achieving our strategic objectives,’ said Mr Siakalima.
