Botswana Savings Bank (BSB) is entering its next strategic chapter with a risk agenda that reflects how fundamentally the institution has changed.
In its latest 2025/26 annual report, the Bank highlighted that, following the implementation of its Lesedi 2025+1 Strategy, it is moving beyond the traditional role of a savings institution toward a more commercially focused, digitally enabled, and operationally resilient financial services provider.
That transformation, however, brings a new set of risks, and managing them effectively will be central to whether BSB can sustain its growth.
For the Risk Division, the priorities for 2026/2027 are therefore focused on strengthening the foundations behind that growth. These include improving liquidity and funding resilience, reducing portfolio concentration, increasing secured lending diversification, completing disaster recovery testing, strengthening financial crime monitoring and cybersecurity, embedding Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations and reviewing the bank’s Risk Appetite Framework.
According to the report, the year under review was characterised by significant progress in strengthening risk governance, improving portfolio quality, enhancing regulatory compliance, advancing cybersecurity and business continuity capabilities and embedding a stronger risk culture across the organisation. These achievements demonstrated the bank’s commitment to balancing growth with prudence while safeguarding the interests of customers, shareholders, regulators and other stakeholders.
Thuso Jeremiah, Acting Director Risk at BSB, says the division’s role is to ensure that the bank’s commercial ambitions are matched by disciplined risk management.
“Through disciplined governance, proactive oversight and a commitment to continuous improvement, the bank remains well positioned to navigate future challenges, support inclusive economic growth and deliver sustainable value to its customers, shareholders, regulators and stakeholders,” Jeremiah says.
According to the report, the year under review was characterised by significant progress in strengthening risk governance, improving portfolio quality, enhancing regulatory compliance, advancing cybersecurity and business continuity capabilities and embedding a stronger risk culture across the organisation. These achievements demonstrated the bank’s commitment to balancing growth with prudence while safeguarding the interests of customers, shareholders, regulators and other stakeholders.
Meanwhile, the Bank’s emphasis on resilience comes at a time when the wider financial sector is becoming increasingly exposed to interconnected risks. The Bank of Botswana’s May 2026 Financial Stability Report notes that the growing digitalisation of financial services is creating new vulnerabilities, particularly through the increasing interconnectedness of digital platforms and payment systems. The central bank has consequently highlighted the importance of robust redundancy arrangements and operational resilience frameworks.
For BSB, strengthening these capabilities is particularly relevant as digitalisation becomes more central to its business model. Cybersecurity and business continuity are no longer simply technology concerns; they are increasingly critical components of financial and operational risk management.
Credit risk will remain another major focus for BSB, which saw its loan portfolio close the 2025/2026 financial year at approximately P4.154 billion, with its non-performing loan ratio at 4.44 percent, below its approved risk appetite threshold of 5 percent.
The bank also recorded total expected credit losses of P132.473 million, while its Debt Collections Unit recovered P10.4 million from delinquent and non-performing accounts through collections, restructuring, settlements and legal recovery.
These outcomes are significant against a broader banking environment in which asset quality and resilience remain important supervisory considerations. The Bank of Botswana’s latest Banking Supervision Annual Report identifies credit risk, liquidity, operational resilience, and alignment of bank strategies with risk appetite as key to maintaining a sound banking system.
Jeremiah says the progress achieved during 2025/2026 demonstrates the growing maturity of BSB’s risk management capabilities.
As BSB pursues greater commercial growth, diversification and digitalisation, the effectiveness of its risk framework will increasingly be measured not only by its ability to respond to problems, but by how early it can identify vulnerabilities and prevent them from becoming threats to the bank’s stability.
For BSB, risk management is therefore moving from a protective function to a strategic enabler, helping determine how the bank grows, how sustainably it grows, and how resilient it remains while doing so.
