Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited (SUHL), a member of the Standard Bank Group, has announced Shs 154.9 billion in Profit After Tax (PAT), representing an impressive 21.5% growth in the last six months.
The strong performance has largely been driven by Stanbic Bank Uganda Limited, the anchor subsidiary.
According to Stanbic’s half year financial results released on August 6, 2021, customer deposits increased to Shs 5.7 trillion in June 2021 compared to Shs 5.2 trillion in June 2020, indicating a 9.5% growth.
The bank’s assets also grew by 9.8%, driven by an increase in loans and advances amounting to Shs 3.8 trillion compared to Shs3.4 trillion in June 2020.
As a result, SUHL earned Shs 154.9 billion in Profit after tax (PAT) representing an impressive 21.5% growth from the same period last year.
According to yesterday’s posting, growth in PAT was mainly driven by strong growth in trade revenue which accounted for Shs 37.5 billion as well as better management of loan impairments, which reduced by Shs 11.7 billion as compared to the same period last year.
“The company remains well capitalized above the minimum regulatory requirement, ensuring that it is in a strong position to continue financing the private sector through the second half of the year,” part of the bank’s statement reads.
Apart from Stanbic Bank Uganda Limited, other SUHL subsidiaries are: Stanbic Properties Limited; Stanbic Business Incubator Limited; FlyHub Uganda Limited, and SBG Securities Uganda Limited. The creation of the holding company corporate structure started in 2018 and was completed in 2020.
Delicate balance
Andrew Mashanda, the Chief Executive for Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited, the first six months of 2021 have been quite challenging especially with the second wave of Covid-19.
“Businesses and individuals have felt the impact of the pandemic and as an institution we have done much to support our customers, our staff, and communities through this unprecedented period. Despite the attendant challenges, we waded through, to post what our shareholders will appreciate as resilient performance, with good growth across all key performance indicators.
Our Return on Equity stood at 23.2% up 1.6% year on year. This strong performance was led by our anchor and largest subsidiary, Stanbic Bank Uganda limited (SBUL),” he said.
Commenting on the Bank’s performance, Anne Juuko, Chief Executive Stanbic Bank
Uganda says the bank saw significant growth in its small and medium enterprises segment as “we continued to support them through this challenging period.”
Overall, she said: “through our financing to boost private sector growth, we saw loans and advances grow by 9.8% to UGX 3.8 trillion from UGX 3.4 trillion in June 2020.”
Juuko says the bank made deliberate interventions to drive economic recovery in a number of ways, including the creation of the Enterprise Economic Restart fund (EERF) that she says aims at raising and providing up to Shs 350 billion (US$100 Million) in low-cost financing to sectors and groups impacted by the pandemic.
She says the bank also launched a new value proposition aimed at revitalizing the operations for SACCO’s and VSLA’s across Uganda.
“The bank has so far provided UGX 5.1 billion in financing that has reached over 261,497 members. In continuing to honour our commitment to support communities, we invested over Shs 2.1 billion into Corporate Social Investment initiatives. We made tangible contributions to education through the National Schools Championship programme reaching over 60,000 students; promoted better access to Health Care through the Maternal Health drive; and joined the fight against COVID-19 with a donation of over Shs 200 million to the Ministry of Health providing oxygen cylinders and PPE for front line workers,” Said Juuko.
The bank’s focus, she revealed: “in the first half of the year was on how to achieve a fine balance between growing shareholder value while supporting customers to remain resilient through the pandemic. This performance shows that we were successful in growing shareholder value while supporting our customers to remain resilient; we achieved this through a number of innovative initiatives which we intend to sustain through the second half of the year and beyond.”
Going forward
Mashanda says priority for the next half is to focus on investing in technology and digital solutions to enhance our service offerings and customer experience.
“We shall also focus on continuously managing our risks across all areas of operations to ensure business continuity and implement the sustainability priorities as a true testament to our purpose-Uganda is our home, and we drive her growth,” he said.
