• The bank's profit includes a ZWG64m fair value loss due to functional currency change, masking underlying operational performance
• Deposits grew 66% to ZWG4.56bn, but loans fell 4% to ZWG850m, indicating risk aversion and liquidity preference.
• Loan book reallocation shows shift from corporate to retail and agricultural lending, with nano loans to women, youth, and pensioners increasing significantly

Harare- TN CyberTech Bank Limited, the institution that spent decades as TN Bank, then Steward Bank, before shedding both identities in 2025 has reported a profit after tax of ZWG129 million for the ten months ended 31 December 2025.

Buried in the CEO's statement, the reported profit includes a technical fair value loss of ZWG64 million, ZWG61 million net of tax , arising on the investment property portfolio at the beginning of the period. This loss was not a market event, a tenant departure, or a structural deterioration in property values, but was a mechanical accounting consequence of the Bank changing its functional currency from ZWG to USD on 1 March 2025.

When a bank changes its functional currency, all assets carried at fair value,  including investment properties, must be re-translated into the new currency at the prevailing exchange rate. The resulting difference flows through profit and loss as a fair value adjustment. It does not reflect what happened to the physical buildings. It reflects what happened to the exchange rate. Excluding this accounting artefact, adjusted profit after tax was ZWG190 million, a 22% premium to the reported number, and a truer reflection of what the bank actually achieved across the ten-month period.

The adjusted figure matters because it is the correct baseline against which 2026 results should be measured. A bank that enters the new financial year with ZWG129 million in reported profit is a different story from one entering with ZWG190 million in underlying operational performance. The difference is not cosmetic, it determines how investors should price earnings growth, how analysts should assess the bank's efficiency trajectory, and how management should be evaluated against the goals they have set.

The clean operational story in these results is remarkable, and it begins with deposits. Customer and bank deposits grew 66%, from ZWG2.74 billion to ZWG4.56 billion across the ten-month period. 

Transport and telecommunications accounted for 53.2% of total deposits, a concentration that partly reflects the bank's historical relationship with the Econet ecosystem, even after the disposal of EcoCash and VAYA Technologies to Econet Wireless in April 2024. Individuals account for 17.9%, and financial sector depositors for 11.1%. The deposit base has breadth but also concentration risk, a single sector commanding more than half of the funding base creates vulnerability to sector-specific events.

The 66% deposit surge drove a 45% increase in total assets to ZWG6.74 billion. Cash and equivalents nearly doubled to ZWG2.65 billion, reflecting the bank's strong liquidity position and its choice to park a significant portion of the deposit inflows in government securities and bank placements rather than extending them into loans. Financial assets at amortised cost,  predominantly government debt, grew from ZWG464 million to ZWG1.13 billion, a 144% increase.

Loans and advances to customers fell 4%, from ZWG882 million to ZWG850 million, despite all the asset and deposit growth. The bank took in significantly more funding than the prior period but deployed less of it in credit. The loan-to-deposit ratio fell from 32% to 19%, a level that speaks more to risk aversion and liquidity preference than to a bank aggressively converting deposits into earning assets.

The most strategically significant trend in these results was the shifting revenue architecture. Net interest income grew 31% to ZWG176 million, driven by the 47% growth in interest-earning assets. The share of NII in total income rose from 16% to approximately 20% over the comparative periods. That movement, is the financial signature of a bank transitioning from a transaction-processing utility toward a more conventional lending-based banking model.

Non-interest income of ZWG684 million remained 3.9 times larger than net interest income. The bank still generates the overwhelming majority of its revenue from fees, commissions, foreign exchange, and transaction processing, income streams that are volume-sensitive, competitively exposed, and increasingly contested by mobile money platforms, fintechs, and peer banks investing in digital infrastructure.

Meanwhile, cash withdrawal income grew 332%, largely driven by ATM innovation. This is a genuinely impressive number and reflects the bank's investment in smart ATMs supporting cardless withdrawals , a product differentiator in a market where ATM access remains a real convenience advantage. But withdrawal income is fundamentally a service fee,  it does not create balance sheet assets, it does not compound, and it cannot sustain long-term value creation the way a well-priced, diversified loan book can. The 332% growth is a signal that the digital infrastructure is working and  it is not a structural revenue base.

The most analytically provocative data point in these results was the sectoral reallocation of the loan portfolio. Between February and December 2025, agriculture grew from 17.9% to 31.6% of total loans, distribution collapsed from 17.3% to 3.8%, while manufacturing declined from 22.9% to 16.0%. Corporate loans fell from ZWG878 million to ZWG531 million, a 40% decline. Consumer and SME loans grew from ZWG79 million to ZWG345 million, a 337% increase.

Stage 3 loans, those in default, fell sharply from ZWG79 million to ZWG3.3 million, a 96% decline. The provision coverage improved. Write-offs of ZWG57.4 million during the period cleaned the book significantly. The net result was a loan portfolio that was smaller, cleaner, and structurally different from what it was ten months ago. Whether it is better will only be visible once the agricultural and nano loan cycles mature.

TN Bank enters 2026 as a fundamentally different institution from the one that existed as Steward Bank three years ago. It has shed its fintech businesses, changed its name, changed its functional currency, changed its financial year, changed its CEO, changed its chairman, changed its loan book composition, and changed its strategic direction — all within an eighteen-month window.

The ZWG190 million underlying profit for the ten-month period, annualised, implies a run-rate of approximately ZWG228 million per annum, a credible base from which to build if the loan book reallocation holds, the nano loan book performs, and the deposit base can be converted into earning assets at higher rates. The 66% deposit growth suggests the market is engaging. The 19% loan-to-deposit ratio suggests the bank has not yet worked out precisely what to do with all that funding.

The next set of results, for the twelve months to December 2026,  will be the first true year-on-year comparable this institution has produced in its current form. That is when the strategic narrative either gains credibility or fractures under the weight of the ambitions being articulated. Until then, the most analytically honest statement about TN CyberTech Bank is that the raw material for a genuinely compelling turnaround exists. The execution has yet to be tested over a full cycle.

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