Housing Finance Bank (HFB), one of the three indigenous banks in Uganda has recorded Shs18bn net profit in 2016, up from Shs14.6bn in 2015. This represents 23.2% growth.
According to the bank’s financial results for the year ended December 2016 released on Wednesday, unlike many other banks, Housing Finance saw its loans advanced to customers increase to Shs401.4bn in 2016, up from Shs367.8bn in 2015. This is one of the reasons why the bank’s profit increased.
Customer deposits also increased to Shs353bn in 2016, up from Shs306bn in 2015.
The banks’ total income also increased to Shs113.2bn, up from Shs94.6bn in 2015, while total expenditure increased to Shs91.1bn, up from Shs74bn in 2015.
As result of good performance, the bank’s total assets also increased to Shs680.2bn in 2016, up from Shs618.5bn in 2015.
However, Non-Performing Loans (NPL) almost more than doubled, hitting Shs30.5bn in 2016, up from Shs16.5bn recorded a year earlier. However, bad loans written off reduced to Shs5.8bn, down from Shs8.4bn.
Housing Finance Bank is under the stewardship of Mathias Katamba as Managing Director.
HFB is 50 percent owned by the National Social Security Fund (Uganda). The government of Uganda, through the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (Uganda), owns 45 percent.
The remaining 5 percent is owned by the National Housing and Construction Company, a parastatal company jointly owned by the government of Uganda (51 percent) and the government of Libya (49 percent).