The Reserve Bank of Malawi has awarded a license to Uganda’s Centenary Group and the Catholic Church Archdiocese of Lilongwe to carry out banking operations in Malawi.
The move follows the acquisition of MyBucks last year and consequently the bank majority owned by Uganda’s Centenary Group and Malawi’s Catholic Church Archdiocese of Lilongwe as the minority shareholder will trade as Centenary Bank Limited.
“Centenary Group and the Catholic Church Archdiocese of Lilongwe have satisfied all the conditions for the acquisition of 100% shareholding in MyBucks Banking Corporation Limited. The new shareholders have also fully recapitalized the bank as required by the registrar of financial institution and the registrar has accordingly granted final approval for acquisition,” a statement by MyBucks released on Friday indicated.
According to the statement, the acquisition process will be completed as soon as the bank receives approval from the competition regulation authorities who are now at an advanced stage in assessing the acquisition.
A statement by the Centenary Group chairman, Prof. John Ddumba-Ssentamu said,“ the bank will from the onset adopt an agile approach to operations, scaling customer centric propositions that will allow to create highly personalised solutions within the Malawi market.”
Centenary bank boasts of having the largest customer base in Uganda with over 2.6 million customers who include 12000 Savings and Credit Cooperative Organizations and over 46,000 Village Saving and Lending Associations (VSLA) based in rural areas.
The bank also has 80 branches, 189 ATMs and over 5200 bank agents.
By December, 2022, Centenary bank’s annual gross revenue was shs211.5 billion.
On the other side, the Catholic Archdiocese of Lilongwe, with which Centenary Bank has partnered with in Malawi covers seven districts of Malawi’s Central Region and has seven ecclesiastical deaneries, 46 parishes and 620 outstations.
It owns a number of educational institutions, hospitals, companies and commercial properties estimated at over $30 million.