VBS Mutual Bank, which made headlines last year after it gave President Jacob Zuma a loan to reimburse the state for upgrades to his personal home, plans to list on the JSE, its chairperson said on Thursday.
The bank lent Zuma R7.8m after a court ordered he pay back part of the $16m the state spent on his luxury home.
The lender, whose clients are mostly rural homebuilders or small businesses, plans to expand from only four branches now to a nationwide network, chairperson Tshifhiwa Matodzi said.
"It is a no-brainer to list within the next three years," Matodzi said after a media conference.
VBS has its roots in a 1980s building society based in Venda. It has 30,000 clients with deposits of about R800m.
"First we will convert from a mutual bank to a bank, then we will list on the JSE," Matodzi said, adding that the institution wanted to broaden its shareholder base.
Though VBS got plenty of publicity for the loan to Zuma in 2016, the President is not among VBS’s biggest debtors, having "maybe one of the top-20 home loans", Matodzi said.
The Public Investment Corporation, Africa’s largest fund manager with more than $120bn of government employee pension assets under its custody, is a major shareholder in VBS, holding 25%.
On Thursday, the lender signed an agreement with a church group to issue cards to the church’s 6.8-million members. Although they will not automatically bank with VBS, the bank said it hoped to sign them all up eventually.
Reuters
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