Tetrad Bank Is Coming Back Soon: RBZ

A lot of you remember Tetrad; they were one of the early adopters of mobile payment systems although they failed to capitalise on it. They had a system called eMali way back in 2011. The platform had a card linked to a mobile wallet that allowed customers to send money to each other.

Like so many banks (ZABG, Royal and Trust come to mind) Tetrad went through hard times. Eventually, the bank was placed under judicial management and it seems they have managed to pull through and are ready to make a comeback.

Provisional Judicial Management for Tetrad Investment Bank was uplifted on 30 October 2018, following a successful conclusion of a scheme of arrangement involving conversion of debt to equity, which resulted in the institution’s capital being in compliance with the regulatory minimum of $25 million for merchant banks.

The banking institutional is, however, not yet operational as the bank’s board is working to address issues before commencement of operations including
shareholding structure, corporate governance arrangements, risk management
systems and availability of working capital.

In my opinion, the banking sector is very overcrowded and none of the banks are doing a good job of luring informal sector clients with Steward being the most successful with their *236# effort. To be fair the burdensome KYC requirements from the RBZ make it difficult as some clients do not meet requirements. Past experience has also shown that KYC requirements are needed.