The look of CBE's newly launched service

Bank mobilizes a record of 15bln birr loans

By Hayal Alemayehu

The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia's (CBE) nine-month pre-tax profits exceeded what the bank grossed in annual profits during the previous year, CBE's PR Department told The Reporter.

The bank bagged over 1.3 billion birr in gross profits during the first nine months of the current Ethiopian fiscal year, the amount surpassing its last year annual performance  by 100 million birr, according to the PR department.

The amount of profits the bank secured during the reported nine months outpaced that of the same period of last year's by 28 percent.

The bank's performance during the first nine months of the fiscal year was coupled with a record high of 15 billion birr it loaned out during the same period to the various sectors of the economy. The amount of loans the bank mobilized during the reported nine months topped what it lent during the whole of the previous year by a staggering five billion birr.

The bank collected close to four billion birr loans during the first nine months, while the level of its non-performing loans (NPLs) dropped to historic lows: a single digit, according to CBE's PR department. Only some five years back, the bank's NPLs were at their worst levels of between 40 to 50 percent, way above the 10 percent mark for a commercial bank to be considered healthy by international standards.

In a related news, the bank is presently finalizing a pilot test of a business process reengineering (BPR) program it launched on March 24 across three of the bank's branches in Addis Ababa. BPR is the process of restructuring a given company's organizations and methods in a bid to exploit the capabilities that would accrue in the process.

The system will change the focus of the work process of the bank from being department-oriented to process-driven, according to experts in the field.

The pilot test has proved to make the bank's performance more efficient and swifter, which, according to customers, is better reflected in significantly reducing the time it takes to get a particular service from the bank.

The BPR will chiefly help reduce the cost of providing a particular service and the time it takes to get a particular service, while it will upgrade the service quality of the bank, according to CBE officials overseeing the implementation of the new system.

Come the implementation of the BPR across the entire branches of the bank, customers will, unlike the existing system, get any type of customer account transfer services (CATs) they want through a single window, thereby accessing a one-stop shop service in a significantly reduced service delivery time.

The BPR will also upgrade the bank's credit service quality and its international banking services, according to the bank's officials.

East Africa's banking giant, which currently operates across close to 200 branches, will in the coming months roll out its "evidently promising" BPR across its entire branches scattered around the country.