Annual Report 2019

MARK VAN BEUNINGEN Executive Director and Group CEO Group CEO’s Report Cim Group has had a very strong year financially. Group net operating income increased by 28% from MUR 1.4bn in financial year (FY) 2018 to MUR 1.8bn in FY 2019. Profit before discontinued operations (Cim Property) increased by 34% from MUR 273.4m in FY18 to MUR 366.9m in FY19, with total Group profit after tax increasing by 9% from MUR 352.1m to MUR 382.7m over the same period. Based on the strategic review of the Group which we completed in the 2018 financial year, we decided that Cim Group would be focussed on non-bank financial services. The decision to separately list our property business, now Lavastone Ltd, on the Development and Enterprise Market (‘DEM’) in January 2019 was made in this context. As stated in last year’s CEO review, at a Group level we also made the decision not to pursue a banking opportunity. We decided that Cim will focus on the development of its core consumer finance business in Mauritius and the region, as well on strengthening our leasing, credit card and factoring propositions. We feel that Cim Finance Ltd is uniquely positioned in the Mauritian market to leverage its strengths in the retail mass market and the SME market. This is particularly the case with its consumer finance proposition where we provide access to finance to more than 260,000 active Mauritian clients. We have leveraged our investment inMauritian Eagle Leasing Company Limited (MELCO) acquired from IBL in August 2018 to strengthen our leasing business and as a result we are now the second largest leasing company in Mauritius. MELCO’s leasing portfolio client base and the capabilities of its team have complemented those of Cim Finance Ltd. We have strengthened our executive team considerably with the following senior executives joining Cim Group during the 2019 financial year: Nick Chin as Group Chief Financial Officer, Sudheer Prabhu as Group Chief Technology Officer, Priya Madhow as Group Head of HR and Kwon Li as Cim Finance Chief Risk Officer. A key initiative during the year was to review our funding strategy, the result of which was one of the key drivers in our decision to hand back Cim Finance’s deposit taking licence to the Bank of Mauritius. The focus of the funding strategy was to ensure that we strengthened the liability side of Cim Finance’s balance sheet through: better asset and liability duration matching; better aligning Cim Finance’s funding to its predominantly fixed rate asset book (approximately 90% fixed rate); and reducing our liquidity risk. CIM FINANCIAL SERVICES LTD / ANNUAL REPORT 2019 22