Bank of Uganda puts Unimoni Uganda under watch as UK parent company nears collapse

Bank of Uganda has said that although it does not expect Unimoni Uganda’s operations to be interrupted by the collapse-in-progress of Finablr, Unimoni’s parent company, it is closely monitoring the operations of the company.

Unimoni, short for ‘Universal Money’ is a global remittance, foreign exchange, payment and credit solutions provider. Formerly known as UAE Exchange in Uganda, the company on 25th June 2018 changed to Unimoni Exchange Services Limited. In Uganda, the company largely carries out outward remittances (bank transfers), purchase of inward remittances (TT Purchase), instant money transfers and foreign exchange services.

Founded in 2006 in India, the Unimoni is owned by Finablr Limited, the troubled London Stock Exchange (LSE) listed global payments and foreign exchange solutions company.

“As of now, we do not anticipate any significant interruption to Unimoni Uganda’s operations which is an independent legal entity. Whereas UAE Exchange Dubai is one of Unimoni Uganda’s money transfer correspondents, the company has several other money transfer partners and so the services will not be interrupted. Bank of Uganda is already monitoring the developments,” Kelvin Kiyingi, the Deputy Director, Communications at Bank of Uganda.

UAE Exchange Dubai, which is also owned by Finablr has been taken over by UAE’s central bank.

Just this morning EY resigned as auditors of Finablr after the troubled payments firm could not accommodate some adjustments it requested, including changing the composition of its board.

Trading in Finablr’s shares on the LSE was suspended earlier this month after Finablr warned it was preparing for potential insolvency. Finablr also said it had discovered up to $100m in undisclosed cheques were made to third parties before its initial public offering in 2018 and had launched an investigation.

Early this month, NMC Health Plc, formerly an FTSE 100 company where Dr. Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, also Finablr’s major shareholder and chairman has significant holding, uncovered $2.7bn of debt that was hidden from its board. This and the subsequent governance challenges discovered in NMC, sent NMC’s share price tumbling.

Both NMC and Finablr have since suspended share-trading on the LSE and NMC dropped from the FTSE 100 Index- an index of the 100 biggest companies on the LSE.