FNB Africa operates within the SADC region, a challenging environment characterised by high interest rates and inflation, high unemployment and socio-economic development challenges. Within this context, we are reviewing opportunities to make banking more affordable, particularly for the lower-end of the market. We are also driving service improvement opportunities, and focusing on skills upliftment and succession planning.
We continue to invest significantly in infrastructure, branch and systems upgrades and equipment replacement programmes as fundamental requirements for competing in a competitive market and ensuring long-term sustainability.
We maintain focus on growing our business and investing in developing our infrastructure, our people and our processes. As FNB Africa, we are market leaders in Botswana and Namibia and also maintain presence in Lesotho, Moçambique, Swaziland as well as a central office in South Africa. We launched FNB Zambia in April 2009 and are intent on increasing our footprint to provide banking services in, while contributing to the development of, the Southern African region. We are well placed to consolidate our position in these markets as a leading financial services entity and explore further opportunities in the SADC region and other parts of Africa as opportunities present themselves.
Our strategy is to deliver innovative, accessible and reliable financial services to our customers. While our primary consideration has been on growing our business, we maintained focus on innovation, efficiencies and people in line with our “good to Great” strategy. We are mindful of the social and development challenges within our area of operations. Through our respective Corporate Social Investment Foundations, we supported local initiatives and invested in communities that are critical to our success. We also focused on contributing towards the economic transformation of our suppliers and in some cases, set aside 10% of our procurement spend towards local suppliers.
While we do not have a specific focus on the environment given the limited direct environmental impact of our business, we maintained focus on our behavioural practices to reduce our environmental footprint and consume resources responsibly for the greater good. These initiatives would not be possible without a key focus on people development. We are committed to the development of our staff as a key requirement for our longterm sustainability through our Care and Grow human resources strategy. Included in this is a staff localisation plan aimed at transferring skills, ensuring that our business is more representative with local nationals in each country of operation.
Sustainable business practice is an evolving process for us as our operations within the continent grow. We are committed to aligning our commercial performance with responsible behavioural practices to ensure sustainable growth and development.
We present our position on sustainability in this, our first year of consolidated reporting as FNB Africa, to our broad range of stakeholders who have a fundamental impact on our business. We are confident that our commitment and strategy will enable us to contribute meaningfully on our journey toward long term sustainability.
