By Shruti Menon Seeboo
Standard Bank is aspiring to be the leading financial services provider in and for – across Africa. Sharing more on this, Head of Client Coverage of Standard Bank Group, Ms. Fiona Thomas gave an overview of the bank’s vision at Standard Bank Mauritius, which is – ‘Harnessing the power of Mauritius as a Global Gateway to Africa’. She was speaking at the Day 2 of the African Partnership Conference (APC 2023) held at Balaclava, Mauritius.
Fiona stated that Standard Bank creates value for their clients and for their group, by joining and building platforms in financial services and beyond.
She said, “Partnering with our clients and growing the African businesses is quite a mouthful.” Now, Standard Bank Group is a universal bank and they are also known as Stanbic in some of the countries of operation. The bank is headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. They also have a strategic shareholder in the form of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). ICBC is one of the largest banks in the world, top three. They acquired a 20.1% stake in the Standard Bank Group in 2006 and they have been instrumental in helping support us in unlocking the Africa-China corridor.
Standard Bank is present in 20 countries in Sub Saharan Africa. Bricks and mortar franchises where we have a very strong on the ground presence and fully integrated full-service banking.
Fiona stated, “The one exception is Ethiopia and here we have a rep office and of course, as soon as they take a decision to allow foreign banks to be licenced in their country, of course, we’re going to take that up. We are also represented in the major financial centres in order to be connected to our multinational client’s headquarters, like, London, Beijing, New York, Dubai, Jersey and Isle of Man. So, what differentiates our financial institution? It certainly is the extensive presence we have on the continent, our deep understanding of each and every of our presence markets, and our passion to be a catalyst for change and growth in Africa. We have been doing this for over 160 years. So, you are in good hands.”
Standard Bank’s market cap is USD $16.8 billion. Fiona mentioned, “We are the leader in Africa in several important metrics. We are number one in assets with USD $160 billion. We are the leading FX market maker. We also enjoy the lion’s share of payment flow, and we hold the largest deposit base but looking at the countries in which we operate, and the strength of the business resides really in the local teams.”
In the Pan African lens that the bank connects, Fiona mentioned that they offer:
- A robust and consistently significant trade bank in Angola.
- In Nigeria, the facilitation of ethics in an increasingly challenging environment with substantial trade flow and corporate action activity in the primary sectors in that market through Stanbic.
- A digitally transformative business in Ghana for example, with the likes of MoMo, which is mobile money.
- And more recently, the conclusion of the impactful Africa China trade solution in Namibia.
- The bank supports the systemically important small scale farmers in Zambia, they developed and launched a platform called One Farm. This is an innovative platform, which is positive, positively impacting the agriculture value chain through digitization, connecting sector participants from procurement of inputs all the way through to product buyers and accelerating enterprise development.
- The bank also partners closely with the mining ecosystem in Zimbabwe.
- The largest banking partner for Platinum, Chrome, Gold and the Lithium clients amongst others.
- More recently, the bank partnered with Lesotho, the entire ecosystem of the city Highlands water project, to GDP stimulus of tremendous amount of value not only for Lesotho, but for southern Africa and in particular phase two is the construction of the dam. Standard Bank has participated in the financing tickets for the main works dam walls, tunnels, bridges, roads, other infrastructure works.
She said, “We also provided trade solutions for the contractors and suppliers and provided multicurrency access for this project. All the way to providing services for individuals the communities that surround the project area, some of whom were less exposed to banking. We are the leading corporate and investment banking franchise and the largest deposit taker in the country. Mozambique, commissioned to spearhead the LNG study prior to fid linking our own macro economic studies as well as our financial services to projects and something of this magnitude really affirms our relevance and our commitment to the region.”
Talking briefly on East Africa, Fiona explained that, “Our standard bankers continue to lead on transformational digital initiatives, provider of significant flows of epics to facilitate trade across the block. We partner closely to power sustainable infrastructure growth in the region.”
Speaking about Mauritius, she said, “In Mauritius, we attract foreign direct investment and support multinationals to continue to grow in Africa using Mauritius and our jurisdictions’ IFC status as a prominent gateway. Standard Bank Africa is our home and we drive the growth and Standard Bank Mauritius with our other franchises, it’s a Standard Bank Group subsidiary. We started operating on the island in 2001. A young business by a group standard in that we are just a little over 20 years old. But we have grown to what is now the second largest subsidiary at Standard Bank Group in terms of liabilities as well as in the number of global multinational relationships.”
Standard Bank’s business incorporates transactional banking day to day short term trade, working capital facilities, investment banking for the longer-term lending debt, capital markets and prominent corporate actions. It supports FX activity, helping clients to execute on their hedging strategies and providing very valuable economic macro analytics.
Fiona explained, “We also have a fiduciary business which supports clients coming into Mauritius to set up structures like trusts, foundations, basically management company, type services, and then, my team the Client Coverage team, which brings us all together as a single point of contact for our clients. And we’re basically responsible for managing relationships, overall delivery and promoting elevated dialogue with our clients.”
Briefly touching upon the bank’s our value proposition, Fiona said that for the treasurers that are sitting at the conference today, Standard Bank’s transactional businesses is very relevant to those who specifically act as regional treasurer’s sitting here in Mauritius.
She said, “The benefit that we offer is for you to have a central view of all your accounts with us across Africa, multiple currencies in one place for ease of oversight and management. Our investment banking provides seamless support for advisory, restructuring and for longer term lending. We have implemented standardised and short form loan documentation, online access to execute and manage your book with us an innovative way or a solution for funding across multiple countries in Africa. This multi currency facility is quite an interesting one.”
She further added, “It captures multiple African currencies for each of the local opcodes that you would have on the continent, being quite a game changer for many multinationals as you would imagine, and then coupled with an overlay of sustainability, finance and ESG metrics is something that we’re focusing quite a bit on. Management and liquidity challenges are common in Africa, and our Global Markets team supports archives to navigate the inherent volatility as well as potential access to liquidity across the markets. We do consider ourselves as the permanent market maker across all of our present markets.”
On a concluding note, Standard Bank Group’s creation of value is the common goal. Fiona concluded saying, “We have clients utilising Mauritius and in particular Standard Bank Mauritius for pooling a foreign currency, for setting up central procurement companies and Treasury hubs here in Mauritius and driving impactful growth using this jurisdiction as a gateway. We are going from strength to strength, the right partner who has a deep understanding, and many years of experience in operating on the continent. Our people are inspired and committed to provide solutions and experiences that matter and create value for our clients in full and across Africa.”
