I was doing some research into the banking sector in Malawi and had to download the National Bank of Malawi 2007 annual report. A cool 198mb of it, which took a few hours and I have a relatively fast link. The 2010 annual report is posted online in Quark Express – a format that no ordinary person can view without the software which costs a few thousand US$.
National Bank is Malawi’s largest bank and a very strong brand there. It’s a public company and part of the Press Corporation Group, Malawi’s largest conglomerate, also listed on the Malawi Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange.
One would think that a dominant bank, with a dominant brand in a dominant group would be keen to accentuate its dominance but it’s bible: the annual report, is accessible only to the most hardened researcher desperate for data. Just trying to get into their website now I have failed.
Malawi is not in a good state politically or economically at the moment and according to www.Internetworldstats.com there are 716,000 internet users there. So is the internet just not worth taking seriously because Malawi is a poor country and no-one uses the Internet? Or is it a case of the Internet is an ideal place to target people with the disposable income and demographic profile with a view to selling them banking and financial services? It’s the latter.
National Bank probably thinks that they have enough day to day interaction with their clients in any event and they do not have to take the Internet seriously. Well NBM’s share of listed banks (Stanbic, FMB) profits has fallen from 63% of total profits in 2005 to 44% in 2010 so one would think that the group would use all available means to reach out to customers and investors. The integrated online communications models of the current day means that you can’t or shouldn’t view an investor as an investor, or a customer as a customer. They are, I dare to say, “stakeholders”. They are everything all in one and a corporate website should be structured to take this into account.
In any modern day corporate strategy the Internet should be a core pillar of marketing and investor outreach. There is one reason that is 100% defensible in this regard. The cost: benefit ratio makes it worthwhile for any company actually.
So posting Quark Express documents and 198mb annual reports is just not on. It’s the basics that African listed companies need to sort out and this isn’t difficult. The absence of annual reports on www.africanfinancials.com is evidence of Africa’s ignorance in dealing with the basics of investor relations and National Bank is an example of part of what’s wrong. Malawi is a country where the Internet should be taken more seriously because of the commercial benefits.
THERE IS AN OPTIMISE PDF FUNCTION IN ADOBE SOFTWARE TO ENABLE LARGE PDFS TO BE CONVERTED INTO SMALLER, EASIER TO USE FILES




