- Says the project is in line with its five-year growth strategy
Access Bank says it has begun a P200 million investment programme to enhance its distribution footprint, leveraging Group digital assets to move beyond a lending dominated book into a full-service digital banking ecosystem with diversified revenue lines.
The bank says its focus is to rapidly expand and diversify the business in line with a recently approved five-year strategy for growth. In this regard, the Board of Access Bank says strategic implementation began immediately upon achievement of ownership transfer, including bolstering execution capacity.
โAccess Bank PLC has designated Botswana a key market it intends to succeed in and will fully support the company to achieve its stated business objective in the shortest space of time, leaning upon its track record of success,โ says the board, noting that the company expects these developments to become immediately visible within the first half of 2022 and to begin being accretive to earnings in the second half of 2022.
During the beginning of the second quarter of 2021, the company announced acquisition of BancABC Botswana by Access Bank PLC after which it embarked on an accelerated programme to fulfil the conditions precedent and achieve legal ownership transfer which was completed by the beginning of October 2021.
As a result, the company performance has been impacted by certain non-recurring write-offs as well as integration costs consistent with transitions of this nature. The board has informed shareholders and stakeholders that the companyโs profit before tax for the year ended 31st December 2021 are expected to reduce by about 75 percent to 85 percent compared to the corresponding period.
This translates to an expected Profit Before Tax for the year ended 31st December 2021 of P18 million to P30 million, compared to the restated P119 million for the corresponding prior period. Overall, the company says its underlying business performance is steady, which is reflected in increases in lending and deposits compared to the prior period. Additionally, Access says the Non-Interest Revenue performance for the reporting period indicates that the underlying business continues to maintain satisfactory progress.
