Absa Bank Wades Through Covid-19 to Post 8% Growth In Pre-provision Profit

Absa Bank Kenya on Tuesday posted an 8 percent pre-provision profit growth of 17.9 billion shillings which was described as ‘decent growth’ from 16.5 billion shillings in 2019 amid the economic downturn that was precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr. Yusuf K. Omari, Chief Financial Officer from Absa Bank Kenya said from the financial results for the Full Year Ended December 2020, the bank posted a 44 percent Profit after Tax equivalent to 4.2 billion shillings.

During the period, Net-interest income grew 1 percent to 23.4 billion shillings, while non-funded income grew 5 percent on a year-to-year basis to 11.1 billion shillings.

During the same period, the Absa Bank Kenya revenue for 2020 rose by 2 percent to 34.5 billion shillings Normalized Profit after Tax declined 23 percent to 6.5 billion shillings. Customer assets grew by 7 percent to Ksh 208.9 Billion.

“Our priority has been supporting our customers whether on loan restructures or waiving fees. During the period we have provided loan reliefs of Ksh.62 billion representing 59,000 accounts” said Mr. Jeremy Awori, the CEO of Absa Bank Kenya.

“We believe there is an opportunity for growth in asset management, our new brokerage business, and our business bank which takes care of SMEs, we’ll continue to invest in those,” he added.

The Absa Bank Kenya was among the few banks in Kenya to keep all their branches open during the year even as Covid-19 ravaged around the world. The lender increased the turnaround time by 30 percent onboarding customers.

As Covid-19 came knocking, Absa Bank launched the Wezesha Biashara program which offers small and medium businesses unsecured loans of up to 10 million shillings which is the highest in the market, as well as LPO financing and invoice discounting of up to 50 million shillings amongst other benefits.

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