Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited (SUHL), a franchise of the Standard Bank Group—Africa’s largest commercial lender by assets, has announced a profit after tax of UGX412 billion for the period ending December 2023 representing a 15.2 per cent growth from UGX357 billion earned the previous year.
Trading on the Uganda Securities Exchange as Stanbic Uganda Holdings Limited (SUHL), it runs five business units including Stanbic Bank—the anchor subsidiary, Stanbic Properties (in real estate), SBG Securities (in stock brokerage), Stanbic Business Incubator (SME training), as well as FlyHub (in technology solutions) collectively employing nearly 2000 people.
SUHL Chief Executive Francis Karuhanga attributed the strong growth of the franchise to sustained exceptional performance by its anchor business—Stanbic Bank across its retail, business, and investment banking portfolios.
“Despite the operating challenge in 2023, our business demonstrated resilience and sustained double-digit growth with a Return on Equity of 22.5 per cent and shareholder returns increasing to UGX1.9 trillion in 2023 from UGX1.78 trillion in 2022. As a result, we shall increase our dividend pay-out to 68 per cent for the FY 2023, from 66 per cent the previous year—subject to regulatory approvals,” said Karuhanga.
Anne Juuko, the Stanbic Bank Uganda said that given the prevalent high interest rates in 2023, the bank had to devise innovative approaches, to ease the burden of borrowing on clients, especially smallholder farmers, women-owned businesses, civil servants, and the government of Uganda which enabled them to access credit under friendly and flexible terms.
“For instance in 2023, we boldly extended the repayment tenure of existing personal loans to up to seven years, from five and created the much-needed legroom for top-up lending which enabled access to money to finance pressing needs such as school, medical and household expenses. As a result, our consumer loan book grew by UGX369 billion in 2023 from UGX309 billion the previous year—2022,” said Juuko.
Driving Uganda’s Growth
In 2023, Stanbic disbursed over UGX160 billion in affordable loans to farmers, women women-owned businesses, through the SACCO lending and capacity building programme, and Stanbic4Her.
Through Stanbic4Her alone, loans worth nearly UGX80 billion were disbursed at 15.5% while over 50, 000 women have undergone capacity-building training. Meanwhile, over 2 million members attached to 6000 SACCOs accessed affordable credit at 10 per cent to the tune of UGX85 billion indirectly impacting 10 million Ugandans.
FlexiPay which is Stanbic Uganda’s response to the rising popularity of digital wallets in the industry saw good growth in users with wallets increasing from 390, 000 to over 840, 000 generating a transaction value of UGX464 billion in 2023.
Stanbic Uganda’s revenues increased to UGX1.19 trillion in 2023 with operating costs accounting for UGX584 billion. Of the expenses, Stanbic says UGX169 billion was paid to local suppliers, more than the UGX137 billion paid the previous year. “We remain committed to supporting economic growth by giving business to local suppliers. Out of the 672 registered suppliers, at least 520 of them are local vendors; this has increased from 394 the previous year,” said Karuhanga.
Karuhanga said, that in terms of paying taxes, Karuhanga said Stanbic paid UGX354 billion having increased from UGX272 billion. “We are proud tobe among the country’s top ten largest taxpayers. The banking subsidiary alone paid UGX314 billion in taxes,” he said.
Through the Stanbic Business Incubator, over 900 local businesses received capacity-building training to enhance their efficiency in management, market competitiveness, bidding processes, tax management and recordkeeping. The Stanbic Business Incubator was also honoured by the Uganda National Oil Company as the best local content partner—in appreciation of its contribution to supporting local enterprises to participate in the oil and gas economy.