STANBIC BANK TANZANIA OFFERS RISK GUIDANCE

Dar es Salaam — Stanbic Bank (Tanzania) has decided to advise their clients on how to manage financial risks, writes LEONARD MAGOMBA.

This is in a bid to tackle uncertainty in doing business which has hampered growth.

The bank recently organised a Foreign Currency Risk Management seminar for its clients. The seminar was usefful for business people regularly exposed to foreign currency fluctuations.

Speaking to East African Business Week during the seminar, the Bank's Head of Global Markets, Thomas Bisonga said the training was designed to provide tools for clients on how to deal with risks when they do financial transactions.

"We have observed that most corporate clients, in the ordinary course of doing business, are exposed to foreign currency fluctuations," he said.

He said their clients are now living in the world of uncertainty with regard to doing business. There was need for the bank to create awareness.

"We believe, the training will help our clients (currency sellers) to deal with risks that might face their business particularly on the financial matters," he said.

Bisonga said they are aware that their clients know the ambiguity in financial matters that could impact their business adversely, but they might not know how to deal with it.

In this regard, he said Stanbic Tanzania has decided to organize the Foreign Currency Risk Management seminar so as to offer the required tools to their clients that would help to deal with risks of doing business.

He told East African Business Week that they aimed to create awareness about the risks that might occur on the market.

He said, "We are here to show our clients, what are the available alerts on the market and how to deal with them."

He said all of this is done in line with the aim to serve their client's risk management needs.

Stanbic Tanzania, is part of Standard Bank Group, Africa's largest bank by assets worth $162 billion by December 2013.

He said that the primary purpose of the seminar is to illustrate to clients that whether actively or passively managed, clients are expressing a view on the direction they expect currencies to trade.

The secondary purpose according to him is to provide clients with information on the suite of products they can utilize to either partially or fully neutralize the unknown currency movement.

He said for the purpose of this seminar, he bank focused on clients who are predominantly foreign currency sellers.

In the near future, the bank aims to provide a similar workshop to clients who are typically foreign currency buyers.

Meanwhile the Standard Bank Group last week reported lower earnings due a sluggish South African economy. According to latest figures Standard Group headline earnings grew only 2% compared with 17.5% at Nedbank and 10% at Barclays Africa. Standard return on equity (RoE) dropped from 13.8% to 12.7%.

East African Business Week