Panafrican News Agency

Botswana Insurance Holding Limited continues to yield good results

Gaborone, Botswana (PANA) - Botswana Insurance Holdings Limited (BIHL) Group's twin strategic focus on profitability and growth continues to yield positive results, according to the Group’s financial results presented before key stakeholders in Gaborone on Wednesday.

The Group shared its strong earnings for the year ended 31December 2018.

The Group’s results feature solid increments in earnings across the board, with operating profit increased by 12 percent to more than US$200 million. Core earnings increased by 11 percent to $380 million.

According to the report, profit attributable to equity holders increased by 6 percent to $370 million.

The strong performance of the Botswana Insurance Fund Management (Bifm) group is noteworthy, making a marked contribution to the overarching performance of the BIHL Group.

“The BIHL Group is a family that continues to grow and expand its ‘Strength in Numbers’. Our twin strategy enables us to continuously prevail against all odds and ensure our continued progress and growth towards becoming a broad-based and fully-fledged financial services group. Contributing strongly to the group results was our Asset Management arm, Bifm, the performance of which we are very pleased with for this period,” said BIHL Group Board Chair, Batsho Dambe-Groth.

Dambe-Groth went on to say Bifm Group’s operating profit showed a year-on-year decline of 3 percent, an improvement from the half year performance which showed a 7 percent decrease year-on-year, demonstrating the group’s resilience in a tough operating environment. Bifm continues to hold its own in the highly competitive asset management market, growing the size of its share in multi-managed funds.

“A key attributing factor to Bifm’s strong performance was the introduction of the new Unit Trust system and deliberate efforts towards growing the Unit Trust business. The latter was especially prevalent in the latter half of 2018 with an inclusive financial awareness road show held countrywide, building on the steady growth of the Unit Trust business since it was first introduced in 2013.

"On the whole, awareness of the Bifm Unit Trust offering continues to grow, with the number of unsolicited queries about its offerings and workings steadily increasing,” said Dambe-Groth.

The company said it owed a lot to all its clients, agents, staff and other stakeholders for their ongoing partnership, contribution and support in engineering legacies through relevant and nuanced financial services support for Batswana (citizens of Botswana) and those in the region.

“We are pleased with the improving performance of all our subsidiaries and indeed overall performance of the group as a whole during the period under review.  Crucially, we continue to work daily to engineer the legacies of our people which inspires us to work harder to deliver on our twin strategy of growth and profitability,” said Group Chief Executive Officer Catherine Lesetedi.

-0- PANA MS/AR 6Mar2019