National Bank of Malawi (NBM) Plc has given the Bankers Association of Malawi (BAM) K5 million to support this year’s annual conference.
Speaking during the official cheque handover ceremony in Blantyre on Wednesday, NBM Marketing and Corporate Affairs Manager, Akossa Hiwa said by sponsoring the event, the Bank aims to provide support and encouragement to esteemed members of the BAM who tirelessly work towards creating a robust financial ecosystem.
“This is not the first time that National Bank and BAM have worked together on the annual conferences, financial literacy projects, and a lot of other projects that BAM collaborates on.”
“As the Bank of the Nation, we believe that BAM is critical in ensuring that the banking sector is stable and that banks that fall under its umbrella are cascading,” said Hiwa.
Hiwa added that the Bank feels this year’s theme, ‘Banks for all and development for all’ will push the financial inclusion agenda as the Bank is looking to reach out to the underserved and unbanked communities and onboard them so that they can have access to financial services.
“You will recall that we launched our product ‘More Wallet’ in 2022 which enables those that are not yet banked to access financial services and transact like they are banked with the National Bank of Malawi. On top of these we also have a wide network of service centers and a wide agent banking network which is really entrenched in the rural and urban areas called fast save, with this we intend to reach out to those that cannot make it to the banking halls,” said Hiwa.
Bankers Association of Malawi Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Lyness Nkungula hailed NBM plc for the support saying this shows that the bank, as a member, sees the value it gets from the annual conferences.
“The conference is all-inclusive taking it from the theme, we will not only have the banks but a wide aspect of people that will be there and being a developmental theme, you would actually see that we have put in an aspect of entrepreneurship which is also a core business in most of the banks,” Nkungula said.
BAM plans to hold this year’s annual conference from August 17 to 18.