HARARE- FCB in conjuction with Barclays said its restructuring exercise is now in its final phase amid expected structural shifts.
The restructuring exercise follows the acquisition of a majority shareholding in the ZSE listed bank by pan African banking corporation FMBCH whose major operations are in Malawi, from London headquartered Barclays Bank Plc, late in 2017.
In an interview with Equity Axis on the sidelines of FCB’s annual general meeting in Harare on Friday, the bank’s CEO, Samuel Matsekete, said the phased restructuring in now in its final phase and the latest stage mainly entail alignment of banking systems to those of the group as well as adaptation to newer robust technologies.
The thrust of the current exercise involves system stabilisation following the ongoing system revamp and the resultant system glitches which has inconvenienced customers.
“We are presently focussing on stabilising the system, and we have to appreciate that during the stabilisation phase, our customers, have suffered some inconviniences some of the time because we had to deal with teething issues, but I am happy to say these issues are being attended to” Sam responded when asked about the progress of the restructuring.
In an earlier trading update for the first quarter of the year, Sam has highlighted that the bank lost a good fraction of transactional income in 2018 due to weaker systems, which Barclays had ceased upgrading since 2015 when the Bank decided to exit African operations.
Subsequent acquisition of the bank by FMBCH, also meant FCB had to align its systems in line with the parent while catching up with the rest of the market, which had made huge strides in upgrading systems.
The banking sector in Zimbabwe has been grappling with digitisation, and these initiatives largely meant running on stronger core banking systems.
Consequent to these factors Barclays lost ground in this space and is angling to recover by year end as new systems and new products begin to take effect on transactional business.
- EQUITY AXIS NEWS
