Mozambique: Moza Banco turnaround due to restructuring begun in 2016

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Mozambique: Moza Banco turnaround due to restructuring begun in 2016

7:14 CAT | 29 Apr 2021

File photo: Noticias

The chairman of Moza Banco in Mozambique, João Figueiredo, said on Wednesday that the bank’s positive result of 146 million meticais in 2020 was due to the internal restructuring process started after the public intervention in the bank in 2016.

“Consumers were afraid to work with the bank. We had to tell customers that they could trust us, and in 2020 we got to break-even, which was fantastic in a very difficult year, not only because of the pandemic, but also because we still have problems in our country which create additional difficulties, such as the war in the north, the 2019 floods and cyclones which destroyed much infrastructure. Yet, in three years, we [Moza Banco] recovered,” João Figueiredo said.

Speaking at a virtual conference promoted by the African Banker magazine on the development of the African financial sector, the Moza chairman said that “the secret is to ‘hold on to people'”, referring to the bank’s employees and stressed that the bank did not hire anyone from outside in the restructuring process.

Banco Moza posted a net positive result of 146 million meticais (€2.1 million) in 2020, against 776 million meticais (€11.3 million) in 2019, according to information available on the bank’s website, which also discloses “a 14% growth in its assets, a 20% increase in resources, and a slight, 1% growth in the loan portfolio”.

These results, the text adds, appear “after the deep operational restructuring, financial sanitation and reconfiguration of the capital structure, resulting from the intervention of the Central Bank, are now even better illustrated with the reach of break-even” last year, in which, in terms of market share, the bank reached 6.1% in assets and deposits and 10.3% in credit.

In his intervention on this morning’s webinar, João Figueiredo was asked about how by Covid-19 had accelerated the digitization process.

“The digitization process was already underway; the pandemic helped to speed it up, but it had already started. Moza Bank was the first, in 2017, to open a digital business, where customers could go and learn how to work properly with their bank,” he explained.

The relationship with the customer, he concluded, is what will determine the future of the bank, since “technology and digitalization will be the same for everyone, so what makes the difference is the relationship with the customer – knowing the needs and designing specific solutions for each client”.

Source: Lusa