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Stanbic Holdings Uganda Limited has released its performance for 2022, reporting record-breaking growth across all parameters.
SUHL is part of the Standard Bank Group, Africa’s largest Bank and is comprised of 5 subsidiaries which include: Stanbic Bank Uganda Limited, the leading commercial bank in Uganda; Stanbic Properties Limited, a real-estate company; SBG Securities Uganda Limited, an investment and brokerage firm; Stanbic Business Incubator Limited, an enterprise development institution and FlyHub Uganda Limited, technologies and innovations company.
SHUL reported that profit after tax went up 33% to UGX357.4 billion from UGX269.3 billion in 2021. Assets surged 3.9% from UGX8.7 trillion to UGX9.1 trillion.
“Our 2022 results are a testament of the resilience of our business. Despite the prolonged uncertainty of the global and local economy, we closed the year with a strong performance , and delivered a return on equity of 22%, well above our target of 20% and an improvement from 19% in 2021,” Andrew Mashanda, the Chief Executive, Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited noted.
The directors have recommended a dividend of UGX3.61 per share totalling to UGX185 billion.
“This consistent delivery of solid results reflects our unwavering commitment to a meticulous execution of our strategy, whose core pillars include revenue growth, people development and a disciplined approach to cost management while investing for growth,” Andrew Mashanda, the Chief Executive, Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited noted.
He added the Group’s performance continued to be “underpinned by our banking subsidiary which posted strong results across all key performance indicators”.
Mr. Mashanda, said, that the new subsidiaries which have been in operation for two years now “continued to make significant strides towards sustainability, the challenging operating environment notwithstanding”. He said that Stanbic Properties Limited remains profitable and is executing various projects geared towards revamping our real estate portfolio while Flyhub received its first revenues during the year and continues to pursue more opportunities as businesses explore ways to become more efficient through automation.
“Our SBG Securities Uganda Limited revenues were impacted largely by a drop in capital markets activity, we remain optimistic about its potential as the diversification into asset management is implemented. Stanbic Business incubator continued to execute on its mandate , as a beacon of SME capacity development in Uganda,” added Mashanda.
Stanbic Business Incubator reached and trained over 3100 small businesses through different initiatives including network innovation and sustainability in agriculture and tourism, micro-enterprise development programme, and supplier development programme aimed at promoting local content capability in the energy services sector.
Performance with Purpose⏤ Stanbic Bank breaks new financial and social impact records
Stanbic Bank, the banking subsidiary, reported a robust 2022, underpinned by “notable progress on enabling the aspirations of our various stakeholders, including customers, shareholders, staff, government, and the community in which we live and work”.
According to published results, the bank reported that deposits grew 6.8% from UGX5.7 trillion to UGX6.1 trillion, driving a 9.8% growth in credit uptake, from UGX3.7 trillion to UGX4.1 trillion.
As a result, income, for the first time crossed the UGX1 trillion mark⏤reaching UGX1.1 trillion, from UGX946 billion in 2021. Together with prudent cost management, net profit surged a record 33% from UGX275.4 billion in 2021 to UGX366 billion.
The bank also reported that its assets had grown by 3.8% from UGX8.7 trillion in 2021 to UGX9 trillion.
Commenting about the performance, Anne Juuko, the bank’s Chief Executive said the 2022 performance was a manifest of the bank’s “purpose of driving Uganda’s growth through partnerships and our own efforts, in ways that directly and indirectly benefited millions of Ugandans and supported the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery”.
“The bank can confidently report that these efforts paid off for customers. For instance, in 2022, the value of restructured loans—as a result of the pandemic, considerably reduced from UGX197billion to UGX. 14.5 billion, while bad loans in the same pool docked at UGX. 26billion. As a result of the economic recovery of our customers, we saw a 9.8 per cent growth in demand for new credit in 2022 with the volume of disbursed loans increasing to 77,819 worth UGX. 4.0trillion from 63,639 approved applications worth UGX. 3.7 trillion disbursed in 2021,” Anne said.
She said, that the bank in 2022 continues to invest in financial inclusion efforts that contributed to a 30 per cent increase in the volume of transactions, as compared to 2021. This partly drive the bank to cross the 1 million mark in clients thanks to “a combination of strategic partnerships, innovations in account/wallet (Flexipay) opening and product calibration”.
She said the bank had in partnership with the government’s Operation Wealth Creation and other development partners grew the number of banked Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCO) to “over 6100 SACCOs with a combined membership of nearly 2 million Ugandans across the country”.
“These SACCOs have accessed affordable credit through our multi-stakeholder Economic Enterprise Restart Fund (EERF) to the tune of UGX40 billion at interest rates as low as 10 per cent per annum for those involved in the agricultural space,” Anne said.
She also said that in line with the bank’s gender inclusion agenda, the bank in 2022, launched Stanbic4Her, an initiative to support women-led businesses by extending business management training, networking opportunities, market linkages, and access to affordable credit.
“With support from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) we managed to close 2022 with over 18,500 women trained in the fundamentals of bookkeeping, tax reporting, and accounting, giving them the confidence to run their businesses,” she said, adding: “It gives us great pleasure to also report that over 11,000 small businesses have opened accounts with us in the past year, and that over 1,800 of them have already benefited from access to affordable credit at rates as low as 15.5 per cent”.
Worth noting, is that the bank in 2022 was the biggest lender to the agriculture sector, lending some UGX437bn to the sector (25% of total sector lending). Other top recipients of credit last year are household/consumer lending accounting for UGX1.04 trillion, trade at UGX663 billion, real estate at UGX573 billion and transport/telecommunications at UGX417 billion.
The bank also said that it paid UGX272 billion in tax and collected UGX7.5 trillion more on behalf of the government, representing 33 per cent of total remittances to the government by the entire banking industry.
2023 and beyond
Anne said that the bank acknowledges emerging challenges in the local and international operating environment which could potentially slow down the pace of growth we registered in 2022.
“Our objective, in the coming year and beyond, will be to sustain the pace of our growth by strengthening our operating risk management capabilities and improving operational efficiency, and remain focused on solutioning for the customer to unlock growth opportunities for them,” she said, adding: “We remain committed to driving sustainable shared value that is equitable and inclusive achieving this requires firm focus on financial inclusion, which involves ensuring that as many people as possible have access to financial services”.