CFSL Integrated Report 2021

29 I N T E G R A T E D R E P O R T 2 0 2 1 G R O U P R E V I E W Group Review The last financial year has been challenging to say the least, with another six-week lockdown at the beginning of the calendar year, coupled with the pandemic’s cascading impacts on the economy and businesses across the island. Individuals, SMEs and corporates in Mauritius are continuing to live through extremely precarious financial circumstances, while also having to manage the different levels of constraints we are faced with in our daily lives. It has been particularly taxing for our employees to juggle the disruptions of another lockdown, all while remaining focused on serving our clients to the best of their ability. We supported our 750 employees as best we can through strict sanitary measures to keep them safe, flexible work arrangements where possible and applicable, and a vaccination campaign successfully coordinated by our HR team. A heartfelt thank you goes out to all our employees for their concerted effort in supporting our clients and continuing to work hard to address their needs, in spite of the extraordinary difficulties they have faced over the last year and a half. Safeguarding our customers and stakeholders The Government, banks and other financial institutions like ours have been at the forefront of providing critically essential services during the COVID-19 lockdown. For us, this was a time for reflection and reengagement inwhatmattersmost. Becauseof ournichepositioning, strong personal connection with our customers and the trust they place inus, wehave a great responsibility to respond to calls for support. And we became aware that the steps we take now will play a significant role in shaping the country’s recovery. To this end, we maintained rescheduling options for customers facing hardships and our support to the retail industry to ensure that the clients of our +700 retail partners continued to have access to credit facilities to meet their needs. We also supported clients operating in the tourism industry by offering moratoriums on vehicle leasing agreements. We are pleased to note that our clients are slowly seeing an upturn in their activities following the reopening of borders since October 2021. Overall Group performance Even under the circumstances, Cim Finance achieved a very commendable financial performance, thanks to a number of initiatives we put in place. Group net operating income increased by 8.5% from MUR 2.1bn in the financial year (FY) 2020 to MUR 2.3bn in FY 2021. Group profit after tax increased by 119% from MUR 190.8m to MUR 417.1m over the same period. Performance by business lines Cim Finance has different areas of expertise, broken down in the following business units: Consumer Finance, Leasing, Cards & Payments, Factoring and SMEs. As illustrated in our organisational structure on pages 8 to 9, Cim Finance is the largest nonfinancial institution in Mauritius and is regulated by both the Financial Services Commission and the Bank of Mauritius for our Credit Cards services. By the scale and nature of our activities, Cim Finance plays an essential role in the Mauritian economy, especially because our focus is very much on the mass market retail and SME financing—two segments that contribute to almost 50% of our economy. Despite the second lockdown and negative impacts of COVID-19, the Finance cluster managed to record top-line growth during FY 2021. Net operating income increased by MUR 178m (+9%) from MUR 1.99bn in FY 2020 to MUR 2.17bn in FY 2021. Profit after tax increased by MUR 155m (+51%) from MUR 306m to MUR 461m, despite an increase in provisioning charges relative to pre-COVID-19 levels to take into account the adverse market conditions. Cim Finance’s asset (loan) book increased by MUR 1.2bn (+8%) during the financial year, from MUR 14.6bn at 30 September 2020 to MUR 15.8bn at 30 September 2021. The balance sheet growth was largely driven by the Consumer Finance business.

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