NMRC grows PBT 164% to N1.2bn in 12 months amid challenges in economy

In spite of the huge challenges in both the economy and operating environment, the Nigerian Mortgage Refinance Company (NMRC) was able to achieve very impressive results in its financial year, which ended December 31, 2016.
Interestingly, in a year when the country’s GDP contracted for three consecutive quarters at 0.36 percent, 2.06 percent and 2.24 percent in the first, second and third quarters, respectively, leading to an economic recession, the NMRC was able to grow its profit before tax (PBT) by 164 percent to N1.28 billion, up from N487 million in 2015.
The company’s Net Interest Income also increased to N3.02 billion, representing 49 percent increase in N2.03 billion recorded in 2015. The value of the company’s asset portfolio at the end of 2016 was N40.8 billion, showing an increase of N1.74 billion over the value in 2015, when it stood at N39.06 billion.
Charles Okealaham, the company’s chairman, who disclosed these at their third annual general meeting in Lagos, Wednesday, noted that the company was quite bullish in its mortgage refinancing function during the year under review as its mortgage refinance loans rose from N1.86 billion in 2015 to N8.1 billion in 2016.
The benefiting mortgage institutions include Stanbic IBTC, which got N1.8 billion; Imperial Homes, N1.7 billion; Sterling Bank, N1.6 billion; Sun Trust Mortgage Bank, N1.3 billion, Trustbond Mortgage Bank, N700 million, and Homebase Mortgage Bank, N500 million.
NMRC is Nigeria’s secondary mortgage institution. According its CEO, Charles Inyangete, it is a private sector-driven company with the public purpose of developing the primary and secondary mortgage markets by raising long‐term funds from the domestic capital market as well as foreign markets for providing accessible and affordable housing in Nigeria,
The CEO, who noted in his speech at the AGM that the company was not insulated from the political and economic challenges in the country, also attributed their 2016 impressive performance to sustained investment in human resources and technology infrastructure to drive robust financial and operations strategy.
As part of its corporate strategy, NMRC is collaborating with the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Mortgage Banking Association of Nigeria (MBAN) and other stakeholders to develop a uniform underwriting standard for the informal sector. “The initiative aims to extend affordable home ownership opportunities to the informal sector. This is in line with our entrenched commitment to promoting affordable home ownership,” the CEO said.
Consistent with its mandate to promote wider spread of home ownership, accessibility and affordability in Nigeria, the company has set up what the CEO called ‘Housing/Mortgage Market Information Portal (MMIP)’ to enable it to gather data for intelligence and profiling of federal, states civil servants and informal sectors (off-takers) for affordable housing.
“This is an effective policy and decision making tool on land allocation, infrastructure and concessions; it enables decision on creating polycentric cities in order to decongest major urban centres,” he disclosed, adding that pilot implementation of the initiative was already taking place in six cities including Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Bauchi, Enugu, Port Harcourt.
Another initiative the company has come up with is the Mortgage Market System (MMS), which is a transformational change that integrates the entire housing market, covering construction finance, primary and secondary mortgage. The system, which is available to all players in the housing industry, has the benefit of removing duplications of effort in gathering data and documents; improving the turnaround time, reducing the cycle time of transactions and helping in making homes more affordable.

CHUKA UROKO