Banks’ merger awaits Bank of Tanzania final endorsement

Dar es Salaam. The merger between NIC bank Tanzania and Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) Tanzania is now waiting final node from the financial sector regulator, Bank of Tanzania (BoT) to start transfer of assets.

The re-organisation necessitated the consolidation of businesses in Tanzania to form a single entity.

Assets and liabilities of the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) will now be transferred to NIC Bank, according to a notice signed by the two companies and published yesterday.

NIC Bank Tanzania managing director Ms Margaret Karume told The Citizen yesterday that the merge will have no any negative impact to customers of the consolidated commercial banks. “In fact, we will be in a better position to provide better services including to issue larger loans to different segments of the customers,” she said.

“What we issued is our intention to consolidate the businesses and once the approvals are granted, we will share more details about our operations,” she added.

The newly formed group is reported to have 12 branches in Tanzania, five in Uganda and three in Rwanda. In Ivory Coast, it runs as purely digital bank.

In Tanzania, Commercial Bank of Africa had total assets worth Sh341.864 billion by the end of September 2019. The company’s cumulative profit for the nine months was also Sh1.92 billion.

On the other hand, NIC Bank Tanzania had total assets of Sh166.622 billion by September 2019.

The bank extended a cumulative loss of Sh8.5 billion, according to the bank’s third quarter financial statement. Going with the September figures, the new entity will have total assets of Sh508.486 billion after the consolidation.

The Central Bank of Kenya announced the merger of Commercial Bank of Africa Limited and NIC Group effective September 30, 2019. Following the merger, effective October 1, 2019, all subsidiaries started operating under a Non-Operating Holding Company, NCBA Group PLC.