Stanbic Bank Botswana (SBB) posted a P420 million profit before tax, a 45% growth from the prior period, in its latest half-year results.
"The bank’s profitability is supported by segment strategies, which have seen significant improvement across the three operating segments of corporate and investment banking, business and commercial banking as well as personal and private banking," the bank said.
Although the company's cash position declined by 74% from P618 million to P164 million, it also saw an increase in loans disbursed to customers and other banks from P19 billion to P21 billion. Deposits also increased from P20 billion to P22 billion. As a result, the bank's net interest income, which is the difference between revenues generated by interest-bearing assets like loans and the cost of servicing liabilities like deposits, came to P648 million from P537 million last year.
"Over the last year the bank made a deliberate focus to improve the loan book quality, which resulted in a significant improvement in credit impairments," the bank told shareholders.
"A positive outcome of the Pension fund regulations, which saw an increase in market liquidity, has also driven a reduction in the cost of liquidity. All these contributed to the improvement in Net Interest Income (NII) growing by 20.5% from the same period last year."
The bank also lauded its investment in technology which it says has significantly improved efficiencies leading to the reduced Cost-to-Income Ratio (CTI) from 53.5% in June 2023 to 49.3%. Technology investments, specifically data analytics and insights, also helped the bank significantly reduce credit impairments by 63.5% from P67 million in the last period to P24 million.