adminConrad Mwanawashe Harare Bureau
GETBUCKS Zimbabwe is targeting over one million bankable customers in the financial technology services sector as the company sees scope for further growth in the sector. The financial technology services provider is preparing for listing on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange mid next month.
Brainworks Capital group chief executive officer and GetBucks Zimbabwe non-executive director George Manyere said the company is currently sitting on 20,000 plus customers but hopes to take up a commanding share of the estimated over one million bankable but untapped market.
“GetBucks is currently sitting on just over 20,000 customers and we see that number growing in terms of our overall market that we are targeting. We believe that there are more than a million people that are bankable within this model. We have just scratched the surface,” said Manyere.
He told a media and analysts IPO breakfast meeting the key issue is to run the business in a much more sustainable manner.
Further growth will be underpinned by new innovative products such as the signing of companies as a strategy to reach employees a growing loan book which increased 88 percent this year at $11,600,480 as at the end of June. The loan book grew by 389 percent last year.
GetBucks will also leverage on its external connections to raise fresh affordable capital.
GetBucks Zimbabwe, a “fintech” company that embraces technology as a means to provide financial products and services, is owned 55 percent by Mauritius-registered GetBucks Limited and 34,06 percent by local firm Brainworks Capital with pension funds holding the remaining shareholding.
Part of the future growth will be driven by the company’s business model which focuses on margins as opposed to interest income, according to Manyere.
“We are cognisant of the fact that interest rates eventually, in the medium to long term, will come down so we do not run our business on the basis of interest rates that we charge but on the basis of a margin that we charge,” said Manyere.
GetBucks will leverage on its international connections, a major source for reasonably priced capital which the company can lend at lower interest rates to its customers.
The company’s outgoing managing director Walter Kambwanji said they have signed “a major employer” in the last month, a move expected to grow its loan business.
GetBucks Zimbabwe’s rationale for listing on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange includes the goal to strengthen and enhance the visibility of its brand to both the public and private sectors, leading to new business opportunities.
The company also aims to attract focused and permanent capital through the IPO and increase access to more appropriate risk-adjusted cost of capital (debt and equity) than GetBucks has been able to obtain as a private company.
“The company’s public profile and accountability is expected to improve GetBucks’ ability to issue debt through a corporate bond thereby further reducing its costs of borrowing,” said Kambwanji.
GetBucks’ IPO, which is expected to raise $3,2 million through offering 93 567 251 shares for the public to subscribe, opened on Monday, December 7, 2015. The public offer closes on January 8.
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