Standard Chartered Bank holds 36th AGM

The Chairman of the Board of Directors, Momodou B.A. Senghore, whose statement was read on his behalf by Mr Omar Gibril, a board director of the bank, said the year 2013 was a challenging one for the bank.

“While the global economy continued to recover and the impact of the poor harvest in 2011/2012 on the local economy began to wane, the overall impact of the improvement did not present significant opportunities for revenue growth for the bank,” he said.

Against this background, the financial results for the bank were muted, Chairman Senghore stated, saying the bank’s total income was GMD421.846 million, profit before tax was GMD59.250 million and normalised earnings per share were 19 bututs.

In his statement, the Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered Bank Gambia, Humphrey Mukwereza, described 2013 as a challenging year for the bank, saying the revenue of their resilient business model of consumer banking grew year on year by a modest 5% to GMD234.1 million.

This growth was enabled by an impressive 18% growth in net interest income while non-funded income registered a decline in performance, adding that they continue to be mindful of their business costs.

‘’At GMD160.9 million, a growth of 14%, costs were kept within the budget notwithstanding the significant pressure on the currency we had to absorb,’’ he remarked.

Mr Mukwereza said customer deposits grew by a strong 12% to GMD2,300.8 million.

This growth was achieved as a result of a new sales strategy that was implemented in 2013 and the ‘’Who wants to be at Anfield?”, and the customer deposit campaign they ran in the second half of 2013.

He noted that the highly successful campaign demonstrated Standard Chartered Bank’s strong partnership with Liverpool Football Club with the ultimate prize being a trip to watch Liverpool play at Anfield.

He said this afforded the bank the opportunity to enhance the SCB brand and their brand promise.

On Wholesale banking, he said 2013 was equally tough and challenging year for the Wholesale Banking, noting that they faced difficulties in market conditions, increased statutory interventions and saw some intervention in the forex markets with margin compression.

In reviewing the bank’s balance sheet, resilient performance, the Executive Director, Finance, of SCB, Richard Ahulu, stressed that their balance sheet remains strong, highly liquid, and conservatively funded.

According to him, some of the bank’s achievements in 2013 were diversified income streams across clients, customers and products; disciplined management of costs in both businesses, credit quality remains good, underpinned by a robust risk management process and other performing areas.

Highlighting the bank priorities in 2014, Mr Ahulu disclosed that they would continue to focus on the basics of banking and maintaining their capital and liquidity strength, disciplined in the deployment of resource, while they would continue to build strong relationship with their clients and customers through their three clients segment groups; corporate and institutional clients, commercial and private banking, and retail customers.