By: Natasha Archary
On Tuesday, 05 December Gugulethu Mfuphi hosted a special Kaya Biz C-Suite discussion on the 2023 economic year, asking a panel of key executives whether South Africa won the year.
In Part 1, Dineo Molefe, CFO of MTN SA covered a range of topics affecting the telecoms industry which was massively hit by the rolling blackouts.
Mfuphi also spoke to Anbann Chetti, African Bank CFO who touched on how the bank’s profits slumped by almost a third due to bad debt which doubled in 2023.
Being in the position for just 4-months, Chetti shares that there are audacious plans in the next year that African Bank has on its agenda.
The bank which has its sights set on the lucrative home loans market, launched a pilot project for its staff as it builds its presence in secured lending.
Anbann touched on how the bank performed this year as well as give insight into how African Bank will fine-tune its home loan proposition before taking it to market.
“From African Bank’s perspective, a year ago we’ve certainly diversified consumer banking and personal loans effectively. What we want to do over the next few years is become a fully-fledged bank, while we’re still going to lend because there’s a market for that, this is going to be a slow growth.
So, how we want to accelerate that is in secured lending, and this is why we”re already piloting our home loans with our staff. We’ve acquired Grindrod Bank a year ago, who came in with R10 billion in business banking assets.
That has diversified our balance sheet, when we ended the financial year for 2023, we ended with two-thirds of unsecured lending and one-third of secured lending.
A year ago we ended with a 90/10 split, so we had 90% of unsecured, and that should give you an indication of the balance sheet.
Additionally, we have also acquired the assets and liability of Hughes Bank, which came in with about R500 million for personal loans, and also gave us over R4 billion of retail deposits.”
WATCH: Anbann Chetti touch on how African Bank performed in 2023
Also read: Kaya Biz: C-Suite Discussion Part 1 with Dineo Molefe
