From humble beginnings in 1995 with a single branch in Delamere House in Blantyre and $1 million (about K1.7 billion) worth of assets, First Capital Bank (FCB), initially called First Merchant Bank (FMB), is this year celebrating 30 years of belief and growth.
They are three decades of belief, growth and resilience as evidenced by the extension of its footprints beyond Malawi’s borders to four other countries.
Today, FCB is a regional bank with strong presence in Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique besides having its Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE)- listed holding company, FMB Capital Holdings (FMBCH) plc, headquartered in Mauritius.
FCB founder Hitesh Anadkat was 32 in 1995 when he quit his corporate finance job in the USA where he specialised in mergers, acquisitions and valuations to return to Malawi to establish FMB that broke the monopoly in the banking sector.
Prior to FMB now FCB joining the fray, the country only had two commercial banks, namely National Bank of Malawi (NBM) and Commercial Bank of Malawi (CBM) now trading as Standard Bank plc. The New Building Society (NBS) provided banking services, but was not a full-fledged commercial bank until 2004 when it transformed into NBS Bank.
Financial sector liberalisation and the need to deepen the financial services industry to bring efficiency and competition heralded the birth of FCB and later several other banks, discount houses and investment banks.
Today, FCB has grown into one of the country’s largest banks now managing assets in the region of $1.7 billion (about K3 trillion) and employing over 2 100 staff across the region. To add cherry to the cake, FCB Malawi is headed by a female Malawian business leader and strategist Agness Jazza as chief executive officer.
To clock 30 and counting in business is no mean achievement and Anadkat acknowledged this in his anniversary statement that the growth reflected a story of vision, resilience and purpose.
He said: “This growth is not just financial. It’s a testament to what happens when people believe in a dream and work together to build it.
“We’ve financed thousands of businesses, taken the Malawi brand to new markets and supported job creation. But the journey isn’t over, we must keep growing and supporting more enterprises. That’s how we help the country.”
Further, Anadkat attributed FCB’s success to cautious, disciplined growth and long-term thinking.
What I found inspiring in his speech is the part where he said “the journey isn’t over” and that FCB’s success is owed to “cautious, disciplined growth and long-term thinking”.
Discipline is an important foundation for success in any endeavour. It is discipline that drives results as it creates an enabling environment for execution of strategies, fulfilling them and indeed overcoming challenges.
In 2016, the FMB Group underwent a corporate restructuring to form the ultimate holding company FMBCH, which formally listed on MSE in 2017 and registered in Mauritius to boost capital raising opportunities through exposure to the international market. Further, the group made a secondary listing in Mauritius.
FMBCH was incorporated in Mauritius on March 17 2016 and registered as a foreign company in Malawi on June 30 2017.
FCB is probably the only Malawian financial institution at the moment with distinct brand visibility beyond the borders. It is always refreshing when one crosses the borders and sees billboards with a familiar brand, even much better when that brand is a home-grown like FCB.
For instance, earlier this week, Sparc Systems founder and Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry president Wisely Phiri shared a pleasant sight he had of an FCB billboard in Maputo, Mozambique with the message ‘Soon, our headquarters. We reiterate our commitment to Mozambique’.
I could not agree more with Wisely that the phenomenal story of FCB should be incorporated in our school curriculum to inspire more Hitesh Anadkats.
Not to grab the shine from Anadkat and FCB, I would add to Wisely’s proposal that stories of other equally successful home-grown brands such as FDH Bank plc by philanthropist and business mogul Thomson Mpinganjira, Jimmy Koreia Mpatsa of Mpatsa Holdings, Wisely Phiri himself and Sparc Systems, iMoSys of Maya Nkoloma, Napoleon Dzombe’s exploits in Mtal imanja Holdings, Sky Energy Africa of Schizzo Thomson, model Lilly Alfonso and Dorothy Chapeyama of Reunion Insurance Company Limited, to mention but a few, should be in the school curriculum if we are to achieve aspirations of creating “inclusively wealthy and self-reliant, industrialised upper-middle-income country by the year 2063” as pronounced in Malawi 2063, the country’s long-term development strategy.
In conclusion, I raise my glass to 30 years of belief, resilience and creating wealth. Congratulations to Hitesh Anadkat and FCB.
To more years of success! Happy 30th anniversary First Capital Bank.
