‘First Capital Bank registers growth in its short lifespan’
MANAGING director of First Capital Bank (FCB) Zimbabwe Limited, formerly Barclays Bank of Zimbabwe, Ciaran McSharry has said the bank has witnessed growth in its short lifespan and managed to pay a dividend “for the first time in many years”.
McSharry made the remarks during an interview by Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube on the platform In Conversation with Trevor.
“We are seeing growth, we are seeing our ability to lend to customers, we are seeing a return on investment and for the first time and I don’t know in how many years have we paid a dividend. We have achieved a minimum capital (threshold) and we have had a good finish to the year,” he said.
“We are positive, and that does not mean there are no challenges, but we are positive about the future.”
Responding to the criticism that banks were fleecing clients through hefty charges, including on statement inquiries, balance enquiry, bank-toEcoCash transactions, and RTGS internal fees, McSharry said it was due to the cost of operations.
“As a business, we have to make money, we have to pay employees, we have to return money to our sharein holders…. so, we have to charge to at least cover our costs. The cost in the business goes up usually and the bank fees are regulated to some extent,” he said.
“A lot of our costs are US dollar-denominated so that is a bigger issue and a lot of our suppliers are also pricing at the alternative market rate, so it is a balance,” he said.
“We are slowly overcoming it, we are not yet there yet as Barclays was a name here for about 130 years, so we cannot change it overnight, First Capital was not a name that was known here, but we are starting to get there.”
He said the challenge for FCB was decoupling its systems from Barclays Bank.
“The biggest sticking point — there were a couple — but probably the largest challenge we had was systems,” he said.
“If you think about a bank and all the systems involved in it, every system we had was linked to the Barclays systems, so everything had to be changed, your call banking system and your finance system, every single thing.”
“The positive thing was that our call banking systems performed extremely well, we had some challenges around some customers … and it took us the first part of the year to get all that done and get working properly,” he said.
In October 2017, Malawi Stock Exchange-listed FMB Capital Holdings acquired 42% stake in the bank from Barclays Bank Plc, and the rebranding to FCB was over a period of three years.
In Conversation with Trevor is a weekly show broadcast on YouTube.com//InConversationWithTrevor. Please get your free YouTube subscription to this channel. The conversations are sponsored by Nyaradzo Group.