The managing director of Centenary Bank, Fabian Kasi has revealed that financial inclusion has been at the heart of the bank’s operations in its 40-year journey of achievements.
Fabian made the remarks on Monday at the bank‘s headquarters at Mapeera House.
This year, Centenary Bank, a subsidiary of Centenary Group celebrates 40 years of transforming lives.
Addressing the media, Kasi noted that through the 40 years of existence, their aim has been to impact people’s livelihoods through financial inclusion countrywide. This, he says has partly enabled Centenary to grow it’s footprint.
”So, wherever you will go in this country, you will see us, and of course you’ve started hearing of us outside the boundaries of this country, and we are very happy and grateful to our customers,” Kasi said.
He also acknowledged that to achieve their goals, over the past 40 years, their banking solutions have had to be affordable, accessible and sustainable, alongside additional support like financial literacy and other community development activities.
”Today, we have the largest number of customers as you all know (2.5 million)..and we invest at least 2% of our previous years’ profits to the community development. So, we always give back to the communities that we operate with,” he said.
Kasi added, ”This journey has required us to educate our target audience about best practices, and we support them to understand how to use our solutions, to start and grow their businesses, and give them the necessary aid to be the best they can be. Ultimately, we believe this helps to alleviate poverty in the country because that is our purpose here.”
Centenary Bank was founded in 1983 as a credit trust of the Uganda National Lay Apostolate.
To date, the bank controls the largest customer base with over 2.5 million customers, almost a quarter of the entire banking industry’s share.
The bank also has 80 branches, 189 ATMs and over 5,200 bank agents.
As at end of 2022, Centenary’s assets stood at Shs5.7 trillion while the net profit was Shs249.6 billion, making it the largest locally-owned bank in Uganda.