CAVMONT BANK
CAVMONT BANK
Striving for Banking
Excellence PRODUCTION: Timothy Reeder
From humble beginnings, Cavmont Bank’s 270-strong staff compliment now serve the more than 50,000 customers who place their faith in its superior personal and business products and services, benefitting from the lessons it has learned in its quarter-century of service.
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Since the first branch of Cavmont Merchant Bank opened in October 1992, its reach has grown to see it stand now as one of Zambia’s foremost commercial banks. Through its network of 19 branches spanning the country it is perfectly placed to deliver its diverse range of personal banking, business banking, corporate finance, investment, mortgages and loans products. Its 270 employees are stationed at key
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outposts in Lusaka (6), Chingola, Ndola, Kitwe (2), Chililabombwe, Mbala, Mpulungu, Solwezi, Chipata, Kasama, Mansa, Mwense and Mufumbwe. Cavmont Bank as we see it today was established in January 2004, the product of a merger between Cavmont Merchant Bank and New Capital Bank, both incorporated in 1992. In 2007, Cavmont Bank’s search for a strategic investment partner was concluded when the Namibian
group Capricorn Investment Holdings acquired a 44.2% shareholding. CIH is perhaps best known as being the owner of Bank Windhoek, a commercial bank operating in the Namibian market, established in 1982, when a group of Namibian entrepreneurs took over eight local branches of Volkskas Bank. CIH announced in May last year the conclusion of its purchase of Cavmont Bank, having also taken full
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INDUSTRY FOCUS: FINANCIAL SERVICES
// OUR AMBITION IS TO ENSURE THAT WE CONTINUE TO IMPROVE AND THAT EVERYONE WHO ENTERS A CAVMONT BRANCH ASSOCIATES US WITH OUR FELLOW WORLD CLASS FINANCIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS // control of Botswana’s Bank Gaborone. By increasing its stake in Cavmont it took a 97.99% effective shareholding in Cavmont Capital Holdings Zambia, which owns 100% of the share capital of Cavmont Bank. “With effect of 1 January 2017, Capricorn Group holds 65% shareholding in Capricorn Investment Holdings Botswana, which
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in turn holds 100% of the share capital in Bank Gaborone, and with effect of 1 January 2017, Capricorn Group holds 97.9% effective shareholding in Cavmont Capital Holdings Zambia, which owns 100% of the share capital of Cavmont Bank,” the group clarified. Capricorn, recently awarded AA status by the Global Credit Ratings
Co. (GCR), made clear the importance of the acquisition to its wider aims. “The transaction is seen as a key enabler towards achieving Capricorn Group’s aim to diversify the business interests of the group and expand its footprint outside Namibia,” said the group of this piece of business, before underlining the potential it saw to fortify the bond between geographically distant entities: “This transaction will also strengthen the already close collaboration and alignment between the entities in the three countries through the shared interest held by Capricorn Investment Holdings.” The many strategic decisions in
CAVMONT BANK
its lifetime have all been pivotal to allowing Cavmont Bank to notch up its 25th year of service. Of the recently attained landmark in its history, CEO Charles Carey was characteristically humble, while pausing to recognise its significance. “It’s a big deal,” he began, “25 years of operating is quite the milestone. While we haven’t paraded around in a marquee fashion, we’ve recognised our key stakeholders who have supported us over that quarter century and we feel that was is appropriate way to have marked it.” With the full weight of these 25 years’ experience behind it, Cavmont Bank now strives for global recognition for excellence in its sphere. “Our ambition is to ensure that we continue to improve and that everyone who enters a Cavmont branch, from any market, associates us with our fellow world class financial service providers,” sums up Carey. “We’re keen to make sure that the infrastructure underpinning our products and services is as robust in
// ATM Solutions - Cash on hand It may be a 50 year old machine, and payments technology may be moving at the speed of light, but the ATM remains at the heart of cash globally; this is according to Wayne Abramson, CEO at ATM Solutions. It’s a bold statement but Abramson and his team believe that despite the rapid changes facing the payments industry with the evolution of digital payments, e-wallets, etc, cash will always be an important part of the payments pie. Consumers are comfortable with cash – it’s universally trusted and accepted, there’s a perception that it’s free, it’s anonymous and quick to handover. Started in 2000 to provide consumers with easier access to their cash, ATM Solutions now owns and operates a network of over 5 300 ATMs across sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe. The company understands the markets in which it operates and for this reason has pioneered solutions like Drop Down ATM Kiosks that simply needs a plug point to operate, and solar-powered ATMs for locations that have intermittent access to power, and cash recycling ATMs that verify notes for counterfeit. ATMs continue to attract customers into retail stores and research shows that up to 40% of cash withdrawn instore is spent in-store. Retailers can cash their own machines from their tills, saving on cash deposit fees, and merchants earns transaction fees on all transactions. “Our main aim is to connect people to their money, and businesses to their customers,” says Abramson. So, while cash continues to be king, ATM Solutions continues to be the independent ATM provider of choice across developing economies.
INDUSTRY FOCUS: FINANCIAL SERVICES
Zambia as it would be in London, for example, or New York.” Ensuring such growth is dependent on fulfilling myriad different requirements, but without doubt one of the biggest challenges facing financial services organisations is embracing digital transformation initiatives: integrating data while still maintaining business continuity. Fortunately for Cavmont Bank and its aspirations, another Capricorn Group company, Veeam Software, was on hand to provide the assistance required. Working with its partner Complete Enterprise Solutions, Veeam rolled out its availability
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solutions encompassing backup and replication functionality to the three banks in the group - Bank Windhoek, Bank Gaborone and Cavmont Bank in Zambia. “While the initial requirements focused on backup and some replication, our evolution into a more mature financial services group meant we needed more measurement elements around our data availability. After all, you can only manage what you can measure,” stated Johan Maritz, lead technical platform specialist at Capricorn Group. Another central aspect of Cavmont’s growth strategy concerns the physical expansion of its footprint, which will take the form of six new
branches in Zambia. “There are large swathes of Zambia that are underserved at present by Cavmont,” is Carey’s assessment. “We have established our credibility in the market, we have a brand that people trust and we have won a number of different accolades both locally and internationally. “We have put a lot of effort into building up our presence and being able to extend our brand credibility across different geographies, so the six different towns we anticipate moving into will help complete our footprint and support our customers who have a growing need of nationwide coverage,” Carey concludes.
CAVMONT BANK
// WE HAVE PUT A LOT OF EFFORT INTO BUILDING UP OUR PRESENCE AND BEING ABLE TO EXTEND OUR BRAND CREDIBILITY ACROSS DIFFERENT GEOGRAPHIES // Capricorn Group was able to announce solid interim results for the period ending 31 December 2017, with profit after tax increasing by
6.4% compared to the previous year, despite continued hostile operating conditions. According to the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA), the economy remained in the grip of a recession during the second half of 2017, while the environment in Botswana also remained challenging, including a decrease in market liquidity as investors search for higher yielding assets in other markets. “During the period under review the group was faced with a number of challenges including reduced liquidity, reduction in interest rates by central banks, the increased cost of funding and the reduced appetite of clients interested in taking up loan facilities,”
said Thinus Prinsloo, Group Managing Director. “Notwithstanding the effect of the challenges mentioned above applying pressure on our interest revenue margins, amongst others, and after tax profit,” finished Prinsloo, “we are proud of the fact that we have continued to fulfil our commitment of being a catalyst of sustainable opportunities to all of our stakeholders in all the regions we operate in.”
WWW.CAVMONT.COM.ZM
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