KAMPALA —The Reserve Bank of Malawi has awarded a license to Centenary Group and the Catholic Church Archdiocese of Lilongwe to carry out banking operations in Malawi.

The name of the new bank is Centenary Bank Limited, with Centenary Group holding majority shareholding and the Catholic Church Archdiocese of Lilongwe holding minority shareholding of the Bank’s shares.

Centenary Bank will be launched on 23rd March 2023 in Lilongwe.

Centenary Group owns Centenary Rural Development Bank; the Bank with the largest customer base in Uganda.

Centenary Bank has over 2.6 million customers including 12,000 SACCOS and over 46,000 Village Saving & Lending Associations (VSLA) based in rural areas.

The Bank has an extensive branch network of 80 branches covering all regions of Uganda supported with 189 Automated Teller Machines and over 5,200 Bank agents’ country wide making the largest footprint in the country.

The Group also owns Centenary Technology Services Limited (Cente-Tech), the Group technology company, with a combined professional ICT experience of over 90years. As the group technology company, Centenary Technology Services provides technology leadership to the group subsidiaries to enable them grow and provide meaningful services to the rural poor.

Another company owned by Centenary Group is known as Centenary Foundation. The Foundation works with social investors and partners with a common social development purpose as Centenary Group and focuses on implementing programmes that improve the social welfare of its beneficiaries.

The Foundation’s focus areas are: Education, Environment, Financial Literacy, Health and the Social Mission of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Lilongwe is a Roman Catholic diocese located in Lilongwe. It covers seven districts of Malawi’s Central Region. It has seven ecclesiastical deaneries, 46 parishes and 620 outstations. Currently, the Archdiocese of Lilongwe is under the leadership