BK Group CEO Dr. Beatha Habyarimana
The Bank of Kigali Group has announced its half year financial results indicating a profit of Rwf39.6billion and a profit growth in its three subsidiaries despite economic landscape challenges.
The BK Group CEO Dr. Beatha Habyarimana said that this performance was as a result of staff hard work and commitment of stakeholders despite turbulent economic pressures.
“We are happy to announce the bank showed resilience, adaptability, and commitment to the BK group objectives,” Habyarimana said while announcing the Q2 & 1H Financial Performance in a virtual press conference this Friday, 31 August 2023.
She noted that the group is happy to announce a profit of Rwf39.6billion and substantial growth in all the key metrics with a particular operating growth for the bank and other three subsidiaries of the BK Group.
For instance BK General Insurance showed growth of gross premium of 30% year-on-year(YoY), BK TecHouse recorded sales revenue of 27% YoY, and BK Capital increased its assets.
Habyarimana said the group will be committed to its corporate social responsibility as a pillar of corporate culture to have an impact on society and the environment but also remain vigilant and agile amidst uncertain economic waves.
Bank of Kigali (BK) CEO Dr. Diane Karusisi explained that the bank remains as the engine of the group and its profit after tax stood at Rwf36.9billion which is a significant growth of over 36% YoY.
Karusisi explained that this performance is attributed to two main factors: First is the increase in fee income driven by the FX (foreign exchange) trading book, trade finance and all the fees from payment facilities; second is the BK Loan Portfolio which has very low Non-Performing Loans (NPL) rate at 2.3% versus 2.6% in the previous year.
“This is very good performance showing discipline in our underwriting processes and we believe if we continue with this trend, we will meet our targets for the year 2023 allowing shareholders to get a very good return on equity invested in the group,” Dr. Karusisi said.
She however explained that the existing NPLs are mainly some hospitality projects which have not recovered from COVID-19 shocks and commercial real estates , but the bank was still at the lowest NPL rate ever.
The BK CFO Anita Umuhire highlighted the bank’s performance and stated that the 2nd quarter of the year added Rwf19billion to the bank’s bottomline bringing up the registered profit after tax (Rwf36.9billion) which is 30.3% higher than the same period in previous financial year.
The BK Group also commented on the recent Meet President, Paul Kagame. The Group CEO said the meeting was aimed at discussing the bank’s prospects in the country following the appointment of the new Group Chairman but with focus on expansion, leading in big project investment and funding.
BK officials also stated that they will focus on digitization and will continue without closing banks but improve their customer service satisfaction to maximise profits on both ends.
