By Andew Irumba
Renowned bank group Absa has taken over Barclays Bank Africa and their subsidiary bank in Uganda is currently rebranding.
Absa stands for Amalgamated Banks of South Africa, the name that all Barclays Africa Group subsidiaries will adopt as the bank divorces from its parent company Barclays Plc, London.
Robinah Mukasa, the Barclays bank Uganda publicist revealed that they were going ahead to rebrand all their branches to Absa. After the branding is complete, it will cease using the name Barclays and instead use Absa.
So far Lugogo branch has already been rebranded from the known Barclays Bank blue colours to Absa’s red colours.
Barclays Africa businesses in Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania and Zambia, will henceforth have to change to a new identity by 2020.
They are all expected by next year to have changed their branches and ATMs to a new identity. The changes were approved by Bank of Uganda and parent the Reserve Bank of South Africa.
The process has been on since 2016 when Barclays PLC announced that it intended over a two to three-year period to reduce its shareholding in Barclays Africa Group Ltd. It sold majority of its shares from 62.3 per cent to only 14.9 per cent of the Africa business.
This meant Barclays Africa could not continue using the brand and name of Barclays PLC since it was no longer the majority owner. Barclays PLC contributed £765m to foot the separation costs and helped Barclays Africa establish its new brand, but will now relinquish all business to Absa.
However, Barclays Uganda is yet to communicate the effects of these changes will have on their clients and how to address the same.
