BIHL focuses on strategic growth, leverages on market position

Botswana Insurance Holdings Limited, the giant insurance outfit listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange, said it will continue to build on its achievements and focus on the key strategies of growth and profitability despite the uncertainty in the market that has been affecting the results.

“We continue to leverage our position as market leader and a pioneer in the financial services space. The recent Airport junction shopping centre is another success story broadening the local asset investment universe for our clients,” said the group’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Gaffar Hassam.

He said the main emphasis on the business for him from the board was to stabilise and streamline the businesses of the successful group from the leadership point of view.

In an interview with Sunday Standard, Hassam pointed out that BIHL has been involved in a strategy to become a broader based financial services business in order to diversify the revenue streams within the group.

“We are successful because of customers, we have been looking at the business base which is very strong and also working on leveraging on the strong financial muscle we have,” said Hassam.

The BIHL CEO expressed optimism about BIHL’s 28 percent shareholding in Funeral Services Group (FSG) whose business model they believe in, adding that that they did publication to increase their shareholding into something meaningful.

Hassam emphasized that they would increase their shareholding in the business within the rules of how much an external party can hold. He said FSG in Zambia is the distribution partner of Botswana Life.

“What is key is that FSG also operates in Zambia, and we have assets and management business under Bifm there and also life insurance business under Sanlam. We are partnering with FSG in Zambia to build their business in Zambia as well.”

He said Bifm’s property side has P22 billion worth of assets and added that they focus a lot on the property side and mentioned airport junction mall which took shape on time and within budget.
The BIHL Group CEO has also spoken about one of the Group’s five pillars,
diversification, a strategy employed by BIHL to spread its risk as well as take advantage of investments that maintain good value for the Group’s clients.

Hassam expressed satisfaction on the cordial relationship with the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, and NBBIFIRA and added that there is need to do more public education on finance.

“I am comfortable and have confidence within the team I am working with under the leadership of Tiny Kgatlwane as the CEO of Bifm, Botswana Life Insurance Limited which is led by Catherine Lesetedi-Letegele and BIHL Sure headed by John Haenen. It is also our responsibility to enforce further training our staff,” he said.

Kabelo Seitshiro

Sunday Standard 10-16 November 2013