Bayport to Increase Its Note Programme to Gh¢500 Million

By Kingsley Asare

The Management of Bayport Savings and Loans PLC seeks to increase the size of its existing Note Programme, a debt instrument, to GH¢500 million.

The company is thus raising the Note Programme by an additional GH¢300 million from the current GH¢200 million.

Nii Amankra Tetteh, the Managing Director of Bayport Savings and Loans PLC, said currently the company was going through approval process from the Bank of Ghana.

Speaking at the facts behind the figures programme of the Ghana Stock Exchange in Accra on Wednesday, Mr Amankra indicated that the bond would have a tenor of seven years at a fixed or floating rate to qualified institutional investors.

He said the new bond would help the company to meet its debts obligations when they fell due and better financially position the company.

The Managing Director explained that the objective of the management was to position the company among the best three top Savings and Loans Company in Ghana.

"Guided by an experienced board chairman, Mr Kwame Pianim and myself, the company is poised to become Ghana's leading Retail Financial Solutions Provider in the mass market space," Mr Amankra said.

The Managing Director said the company would be venturing into other markets in the Small and Medium Scale sector, apart from the payroll lending market, to seek for opportunities that could help boost the performance of the company.

To this end, he said, the company would develop tailor-made products to meet the needs of the players in the SME space, saying currently on a little over seven per cent of the company's loan portfolio last year was allocated to the SME market.

"Bayport seeks relevance and inclusion; and this pursuit of this has successfully piloted new financials solutions in the micro business space offering the Ghanaian micro business entity access, purpose and an opportunity to participate in the economic discourse," he said.

Mr Amankra stressed that Bayport Management Limited merger with Bayport Financial Services and Consumer Finance Company in October last year has well positioned the company to deliver on its mandate.

With the merger, he said, the company established 15 years ago and a leader in payroll lending, currently has 175,988 customers and employed more than 1700 Ghanaians with 54 networked branches in all the 10 regions.

Mr Gabriel Quartey, the Chief Financial Officer of Bayport Savings and Loans presenting the last year and first quarter 2018 report of the company, said the company closed the year with profit after tax of more than GH¢3.9 million below the GH¢15.5 million recorded in 2016.

The Chief Financial Officer attributed the drop in profit to the huge cost incurred by the company to the acquisition of Information Communication Technology systems and rationalisation being undertaken due to the merger of Bayport Management Limited and Bayport Financial Services and Consumer Finance Company.

He said the company in the first quarter of 2018 had recorded a profit of more than GH¢4 million.

He said the next interest income last year increased to GH¢100.3 million from the GH¢81.9 million recorded in 2016.

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