By JUDITH NAMUTOWE –

INVESTRUST Bank Plc has secured approval of shareholders to raise K40 million through a rights of offer to existing shareholders.
The objective of the rights issue is to increase the current primary capital of the bank to K104 million required by the Bank of Zambia (BoZ).
Newly-appointed managing director Richard Chembe said this during the cocktail party dubbed ‘Meet the MD’ at Lusaka’s Radisson Blu Hotel on Wednesday evening.
“To strengthen the bank operations, we have secured approval of shareholders to raise K40 million through a rights offer to existing shareholders,” Dr Chembe said.
He said the resulting funds    would be deployed into pursuing strategies aimed at returning the operation to profitability.
Dr Chembe said the bank’s profitability had not been satisfactory due to increase in the statutory reserve ratio, capping of interest rates and increasing cost of funds.
He said the non-performing loans (NPLs) from the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 left the Zambian banking sector with a high incidence of bad loans.
Dr Chembe, however, said despite the challenges the bank had faced in the recent past Investrust was putting in place strategies to turn around the adverse performance of the recent past.
He said the bank was looking at operational efficiencies as a matter of urgency.
Investrust was reviewing its organisational and operational structures with a view to streamlining them to ensure efficient resource utilisation and quick turn-around time on service delivery.