National Bank of Malawi bags award

Malawi Stock Exchange listed National Bank of Malawi (NBM) PLC has won an international award for offering innovative solutions and social impact in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) finance.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) and Bank of the European Union presented the award to NBM recently during the third EIB Southern Africa SME and Microfinance Academy held in South Africa.

EIB said NBM won the award for organising regional customer events that included training on business planning and financial management, among other innovations.

Receiving the award on behalf of the bank, Head of Personal and Business Banking, Oswin Kasunda, said the award is very important to the bank as it recognises the strides that the bank has made towards embracing SMEs in the country.

“We are promoting financial inclusion and for us to do that, we need to come up with initiatives that embrace and attract both the banked and unbanked populations, especially SMEs. The bank has a programme that promotes growth of the SME sector through the provision of business and financial management skills and knowledge. We are happy that our efforts are being recognised,” Kasunda said.

He said NBM believes that when the SME sector grows, other non-banking sectors will also be attracted, therefore, reaching out to more people with financial inclusion.

Last year, NBM held various customer interaction meetings, where the bank also offered training to SMEs in areas such as business plans, book and record keeping and how to seperate business from personal transactions.

The meetings were held countrywide.