TETRAD Investment Bank Limited (TIB) has inched closer to getting a commercial banking licence amid indications that the financial institution has partially met the revised minimum capital requirements announced by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe last year, a senior bank executive has said.
Report by Victoria Mtomba
TIB chief operating officer Emmanuel Chikaka yesterday told NewsDay Business that the institution was expecting to go into commercial banking by the end of the second quarter of this year.
The bank’s planned move to engage in retail banking comes at a time when the future of merchant banking in Zimbabwe remains bleak.
Last year, the central bank set a new minimum capital requirements for commercial banks at $100 million from $12,5 million and has spread the compliance over one-and-half years to June 2014.
Under this staggered recapitalisation exercise, commercial banks were expected to raise $25 million in capital by December 2012.
“We are still waiting for the approval from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe,” Chikaka said.
“We have met the minimum capital requirements, which were part of the process to get our capital to the required levels as at December 31, 2012. We capitalised using internal resources.”
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He said the bank had achieved the $25 million threshold and was placed to achieve the next phase by June this year.
“Moving into commercial banking would help us in offering a wide range of products that we have been failing to provide to customers as a merchant bank,” he said.
“We have also been in the banking sector for 15 years so we have established customers already.”
Chikaka said in future there was scope in the banking sector as the economy opened up.
He said the bank was already putting in place appropriate structures for commercialisation.
TIB has four branches and wants to increase them this year. TIB is part of the Tetrad Group, which comprises an asset manager, TFS Management Company; a micro-finance company, Multiridge Finance, an insurance company, THI Insurance, and a property development company, Tetrad Properties.
The Tetrad Group was established in 1995.
