Barclays Bank Mozambique Has a Bright Future Ahead Says CEO Rui Barros

Rui Barros, CEO and Executive Board Member of Barclays Mozambique, gives an overview of the bank and shares his strategy as well as his vision for the future of Barclays.

“Barclays under its current ownership has been in Mozambique for about 14 years. However, we acquired the bank to begin with, so we actually feel part of a family that has been around for much longer than just 14 years. In fact, it’s almost 40 years since BPD, the regional entity that was owned by the State, was incorporated, soon after Independence in 1977. This means we have a very long history in Mozambique, which gives us a bulk of experience and local knowledge that we can then blend with our understanding of global markets – which is literally global, given that Barclays is present in more than 50 countries around the world; but which to a large extent is also African, since Barclays Africa itself is one of the largest financial institutions on the continent”, says Rui Barros.

“Therefore, we pride ourselves in having that unique offering, in terms of understanding global markets, the African continent and Mozambique; while bringing all of this together to our customers, to our clients and even to our colleagues, in terms of the kind of experience they can acquire by working with us. In short, Barclays is certainly a bank of reference in Mozambique. The fact that we have this history behind us has also enabled us to evolve over time, and more recently we have been focusing our business on corporate and investment banking, as a franchise or operation, given the needs of the country. We have a very large retail presence. We have always been, and continue to be, among the largest banks in Mozambique, and we aim to maintain our retail presence. But historically, we may not have been as large in terms of corporate banking as we believe we could have or should be, especially since our international footprint also allows us to support multinationals and cross-border banking in a way that only a few, if any, of our competitors can. So we are in the process of transforming the bank, while still being very proud of building upon the values and the experience we have accumulated over all these decades. We really see our future as quite bright in that sense”, he adds.