Changes at the Dfcu Limited continue to happen; the latest is Arise B.V.’s appointment of Friedrich Christian Pelser to the Board, after the resignation of Deepak Malik in September.

Pelser is a Chartered Accountant with 16 years’ work experience is currently working as a Senior Investment Manager, with Arise B.V. He has extensive experience in investment banking and private equity which he brings to the Board. His appointment demonstrates the commitment of Arise BV in continued influence on the board.

Malik’s resignation as a non-executive director meant that the Dfcu board was left with five other non-executive directors led by Elly Karuhanga as Chairman. Others directors who Pelser now joins are; Albert Jonkergouw, Winifred Tarinyeba- Kiryabwire, Frederick Kironde Lule and Michael Alan Turner.
The board members are expected to work with Mathias Katamba who is heading to the bank as Managing Director. Currently he is the MD of Housing Finance Bank, though sources say he handed in his resignation letter.

Arise B.V. has majority stake of over 50 per cent in Dfcu Limited, the holding company of Dfcu Bank after lending US $50 million in February 2017. The Group also has 12 per cent stake in Equity Group Holdings, the parent company of Kenya’s Equity Bank and like in Dfcu, it is the largest single shareholder. But also the groups have a stake as second majority shareholders in NMBZ Holdings Limited that runs National Merchant Bank of Zimbabwe.

DFCU Shareholding percentages
Arise BV 58.71 per cent
CDC Group of the United Kingdom 9.97 per cent
National Social Security Fund (Uganda) 7.69 per cent
Kimberlite Frontier Africa Naster Fund 6.15 per cent
2 undisclosed Institutional Investors 3.22 per cent
SSB-Conrad N. Hilton Foundation 0.98 per cent
Vanderbilt University 0.87 per cent
Blakeney Management 0.63 per cent
Retail investors 11.19 per cent
BoU staff retirement benefit scheme is 0.59 per cent

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The African Development Bank (AfDB) and African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI) have announced a US$500 million credit insurance deal structured to cover a portion of the Bank’s portfolio of non-sovereign operations in Africa.

Officials expect the transaction to have an important demonstration effect to encourage similar institutions to invest more on the continent in the future.

While ATI will be the direct insurer facing the AfDB, the transaction involves the participation of a number of Lloyd’s & Company private reinsurers who will share the risk on African financial institutions. “This vehicle will enable many insurance companies operating outside Africa to participate in the financing of development in Africa for the first time,” says the press release.

According to the press release, the deal is the second balance sheet optimization transaction under the “Room to Run” initiative following the successful signing of the Synthetic Securitization transaction last month.

The insurance will cover approximately 22 per cent of the Bank’s US $2.3 billion outstanding non-sovereign financial sector portfolio. Specifically, it will protect the Bank against the non-payment of loans made to approximately 30 African financial institutions. The portfolio spans the African continent, with exposure to financial institutions in all major regions of the continent, and is expected to release sufficient capital to create almost US $500 million of headroom for new lending.

“This transaction leverages the Bank’s own capital to achieve more development and lending as it creates new pathways for collaboration between private insurers and the Bank in the development of the African continent,” said Akinwumi Adesina, President of AfDB, adding that, “This is a significant step towards enhancing Africa’s finance partnerships across the globe.”

“Given Africa’s endowment as a resource-rich continent with a strong economic outlook, the Bank had adopted more efficient and effective initiatives to bridge the existing development financing gaps,” he said.

Launching the transaction at an event in London, Penny Mordaunt, International Development Secretary commented, “This is a great example of how the City of London can partner with African institutions to mobilise more investment for developing countries and support the creation of the 18 million new jobs a year which Africa needs. This work is driving economic development abroad and supporting prosperity at home”.

The transaction is also expected to strengthen the development of credit insurance markets in Africa. The experience and comfort gained in transferring risks between the African Development Bank, the African Trade Insurance Agency and the Lloyd’s reinsurers is expected over time to lead to the lengthening of insurance terms and lower insurance and financing costs, leading to more trade and investment in, and among, the private sector and the African region.

“With ATI’s insurance guarantees leveraging the balance sheet of AfDB and crowding-in new investments, this innovation provides a timely solution to the scarcity of trade finance that could create enormous impact across the continent. ATI’s commitment reflects the US$35 billion worth of trade and investments that we have supported in the past decade, which, thanks to this model, can now be more easily replicated, to the ultimate benefit of Africa” said George Otieno, Chief Executive Officer of ATI.

RFIB commented, “RFIBs Political Risk & Trade Credit team (PRTC) are delighted to have been able to assist the African Development Bank and ATI in putting together this significant insurance-backed programme that will allow the Bank to facilitate further lending, promoting further development in Africa.”

The transaction between AfDB and ATI is one of several recent initiatives undertaken by the Bank under its “Room to Run” program that responds to the G20 and G7 call on the multilateral development banks (MDBs) to explore innovative ways to optimize their balance sheets to achieve the “Billions to Trillions” development agenda.

Credit insurance is one of such instruments involving a specialized market with currently low penetration in Africa, but intent on playing a more active role.

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The sale of insurance products through banks (Bancassurance) contributed Shs9.3 billion to the local insurance sector, according to the latest report.

The collection was from nine banks licensed since end of 2017. The performance as at end of June 2018 shows that a total of Shs442 billion in gross written premium income was underwritten in the first half of this year compared to Shs358 billion which was underwritten in the same period of 2017.

The performance was revealed by the Ag. Director Planning, Market Research and Development, Sande Protazio, at the handover ceremony of the 13th and 14th Bancassurance Agents licenses to KCB Bank and Opportunity Bank respectively, at the IRA offices.
Mr. Sande said that: “Out of Shs9.3 billion underwritten premiums generated through bancassurance, life business accounted for Sh7.5 billion and non-life business was Shs1.8 billion.”
The Chief Executive Officer of the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA), Alhaj Kaddunabbi Ibrahim Lubega, said bancassurance would give the much needed support to boost insurance penetration. “We believe that the commercial banks’ wide network, product innovation, technological advancement and platforms running in different banks, will provide an ideal niche or focused market for the insurance sector,” he said.

Meanwhile, IRA recognizes that one way of fast tracking access to insurance is by creating awareness and deeper understanding of its benefits.
The Authority has therefore taken deliberate effort to focus its work towards public and consumer education drives aimed at reducing the vulnerability of Ugandans to risks and increasing their socio-economic empowerment.

IRA recently participated in the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) Tax Payers Appreciation Week to sensitise business communities in business risk management

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Enterprises in Southern East Africa and Mauritius are rapidly stepping up their efforts to boost customer experience, reports customer experience specialist channel-Genesys.

Genesys says enterprises in African development hubs are experiencing strong growth and are fast catching up with their international counterparts in terms of next-generation in customer service, sales and marketing.

“Businesses across major verticals including financial services, healthcare, insurance, hospitality and travel are moving to modernise their contact centre infrastructure, customer experience, customer service, sales and marketing channels are key focus areas,” says Adriaan van Staden, Senior Sales Manager – Southern East Africa at Genesys, adding that this is driven by customer demand and growing competition in these sectors.

In many cases, businesses in the region are investing in contact centres and customer experience suites for the first time or are moving from very limited capabilities, and are leapfrogging directly to cloud-based all-in-one solutions, he says. Van Staden notes that there is particularly keen interest in cloud-based solutions that allow for in-depth analysis of customer sentiment and market trends, and that support proactive customer service.

“Depending on local conditions, companies in the region are looking to either consider private cloud or a Cloud solution such as our PureCloud offering. We see particularly strong demand for cloud / hosted solutions into Africa, where there are skills shortages, rapid time to value is a key and a critical priority. Companies in Africa are looking for innovative solutions with a compelling total cost of ownership and a proven ROI model,” says Van Staden.

Van Staden notes that as they adopt next-generation customer experience solutions, African enterprises are fast becoming innovation leaders in terms of how they deploy and use these solutions: “Globally, we find many customers setting up channels based on simplistic business rules for routing decisions across different interactions,” he says.

He says that whereas across Africa, enterprises are harnessing workforce management along with intelligent routing to direct calls to agents based on agents’ skills levels, their ability to resolve the query, sale or service with context from previous interactions across their channel of choice and even whether the agents are currently available to handle the interactions.

These moves to innovate and drive growth by harnessing next-generation solutions are encouraging signs of overall economic development across the region, he says.

“This increased investment is evidenced by our own outstanding performance in the region – in the financial year to date, our SEA Region is currently ranked 5th worldwide out of 26 sub regions globally. In fact, our SEA Region’s growth year on year was 74% in Q1, 110% in Q2, 28% in Q3 and is forecasted to top 87% in Q4.”

Demand for world class solutions in this space is so high in the region that Genesys is actively growing its presence across SEA. “Our current partner network consists of nine value added resellers, each strategically focused on unique Genesys offerings and solutions, and we’ve also added an additional three strategic resellers to meet demand from customers into Africa as well as Mauritius,” says van Staden.

“Southern and East Africa are clearly entering a rapid growth phase and we are excited to be helping drive this new phase in enterprise transformation and development on the continent,” says van Staden.

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