The total mortgage book, which is the total amount for property being financed through commercial banks in Namibia, has reached approximately N$27 billion.
Of this amount, FNB Namibia says, it holds the largest market share of 38.5 percent or just over N$10.3 billion. “Our bank has maintained their prudent credit criteria throughout the last 12 months. We would like to believe that our superior service standards and products contributed to the growth of our book over the last year. Despite this excellent growth, our non-performing loans remained low at 1.15 percent compared to the industry ratio of 1.50 percent,” said the bank’s Head of Home Loans, Thomas Slabbert.
During a recent FNB Realtors Club Awards evening, he said that FNB again managed to outperform the overall national property market by growing 14 percent as opposed to the national percentage of 13 percent.
“This growth is mainly as a result of high property prices. Apart from the good growth which we have seen over the past year the property index also reflects that recent property prizes are beginning to contract.” Slabbert thanked estate agents, agencies and developers and said that total business approved, which was received from all estate agents, amounted to N$1 billion.
“Apart from the mainstream home loan offering FNB also tries to promote the affordable housing segment. Although we realise that a lot still has to be done to assist this segment of the market, we have noted strong growth in this segment. The bank has also engaged with several other developers of affordable housing projects in order to try and stimulate this segment. In addition, FNB is very committed to assist with the government initiative for the development of mass housing. The bank continues to engage role players and is actively involved with assistance in this market. This includes the use of alternative building methods,” added Slabbert.
He said that had embarked on fine tuning their front-end system. “Last year we completed the first phase by implementing the Account Opening Optimisation, or AOO system, and I am glad to announce that we will soon commence with testing our new Pyramid front-end system. This promises to provide an even quicker response to the market with improved turnaround times to the estate agent. Behind the scenes we are also in progress to integrate all the home loan business from the country branches to a central hub in Windhoek. All of the above is to improve on our efficiencies and again improve on turnaround time to the market.”
FNB Namibia Home Loans awarded the top performing agents, agencies and developers at the FNB Realtors Club Awards evening on April 18. The performance of agents, agencies and developers are tracked throughout a 12-month period starting on April 01 through to March 31 of the next year.
The main prize this year is an all-expenses paid trip to the Western Mediterranean, while numerous other agents who brought between N$5 million and N$30 million of business to FNB Namibia were rewarded with cash prizes and Namibian and South African trips.
The three main prize winners were Estate Agency of the Year – Just Property Group; Developer of the Year – Van Wyngaarden Projects and Estate Agent of the Year in the FNB Realtors Club for 2015 – Lona van Wyk, for the fifth consecutive year.