1. Absa is one of the most established financial institutions in Mauritius. Could you begin by outlining Absa Bank Mauritius’s strategic role within the wider Absa Group and the Mauritian financial ecosystem?
Absa Group Limited is one of Africa’s largest financial services institutions, with full banking operations in ten African countries and representative offices in Namibia and Nigeria. The Group employs over 37,000 people and serves more than 12.7 million customers. Beyond the continent, Absa maintains international offices in London, New York and Beijing, with plans underway for a representative office in Dubai to further support trade and investment flows into Africa.
The Group’s ambition is clear: to double its share of African banking revenues and become a leading pan-African bank. As our CEO, Kenny Fihla, often says, the goal is to build a financial institution that Africa can truly be proud of. This strategy is driven by the continent’s untapped potential across retail banking, corporate finance and investment services, and is supported by a combination of organic growth and targeted acquisitions, such as the recent acquisition of Standard Chartered’s wealth and retail banking operations in Uganda.
Within this context, Absa Bank (Mauritius) Limited plays a pivotal strategic role. Operating from one of Africa’s most sophisticated financial centres, Mauritius serves as a natural bridge between international capital and African growth opportunities. Absa Mauritius offers a full universal banking model, spanning corporate and investment banking, business banking, international banking, personal and premier banking, and wealth and investment management.
From a Group perspective, Mauritius is a critical profit and capability hub. Absa Mauritius is the largest contributor to headline earnings within Corporate and Investment Banking outside South Africa and holds the largest CIB deposit book beyond the home market. Overall, it contributes approximately 20% of Africa Regions’ headline earnings, underscoring its importance to the Group’s continental ambitions.
2. How does Absa Mauritius act as a catalyst for the Group’s pan-African growth ambition?
Mauritius offers a unique value proposition as a gateway into Africa. It combines political stability, a robust legal and regulatory framework, strong investor protection and adherence to international standards. Importantly, Mauritius is the only African country with an investment-grade sovereign credit rating, which provides significant comfort to international investors and development finance institutions.
Absa Mauritius leverages this positioning to facilitate cross-border transactions across Africa. The bank plays a key role in trade finance, structured finance, capital markets and advisory services, connecting global capital with African opportunities. It also acts as a centre of excellence for wealth management, providing offshore diversification solutions for high-net-worth individuals and families.
The recent acquisition of HSBC’s wealth, personal and business banking operations in Mauritius further strengthened this platform, expanding the client base and deepening the bank’s universal banking capabilities. In effect, Absa Mauritius operates as a strategic conduit that aligns global capital, regional expertise and African growth priorities.
3. What role does Absa play within Mauritius’s domestic financial ecosystem?
Absa Bank (Mauritius) Limited has been designated a Domestic Systemically Important Bank (D-SIB), reflecting its importance to national financial stability. This designation is based on criteria such as size, interconnectedness, complexity and substitutability, and requires the bank to maintain higher capital buffers.
What differentiates Absa Mauritius is its position as the only international bank in the country operating a truly universal banking model across both domestic and offshore segments. The 2024 acquisition of HSBC’s domestic retail and SME operations added approximately 38,000 customers and further reinforced this role.
The bank has also played a leading role in developing local capital markets, including raising over MUR 3 billion in local currency for the real estate sector—the largest such raise in Mauritius, and leading a major IPO in the TMT sector on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius.
Beyond financial performance, Absa is deeply committed to social impact. Through initiatives such as the Stories of Hope programme, the bank supports cancer screening awareness and healthcare infrastructure, including the renovation of the Ladies Ward at Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital. These efforts contributed to Absa Mauritius being named Bank of the Year 2025 by The Banker, recognising its transformation, innovation and sustained excellence.
4. Mauritius is positioning itself as a resilient, innovation-driven financial centre. How is Absa supporting this ambition through digital transformation?
Digital transformation at Absa is fundamentally customer-led. We have introduced fully online onboarding for both onshore and offshore clients, enhanced digital channels that enable anytime, anywhere banking, and modernised our technology stack to ensure 24/7 availability.
In payments, Absa launched the first omni-channel digital payment solution in Mauritius, enabling real-time, low-cost payments through smartphone apps. This includes MauCAS QR, Tap to Pay and Pay by SMS. For merchants, these solutions provide transaction visibility, reconciliation tools and improved cash-flow management, while reducing reliance on cash and expensive card infrastructure.
Digitalisation has also driven operational efficiency, saving over 18,000 employee hours and allowing teams to focus more on customer relationships. Importantly, digital is not just about efficiency, it is a revenue and growth engine. Solutions such as the Digi suite of products and Spark Business create new income streams while supporting Mauritius’s ambition to become a fintech hub.
5. How is Absa strengthening financial inclusion, SME support and access to credit in a volatile economic environment?
Inclusive growth is central to Absa’s strategy. For SMEs, we offer fully digital account opening, business debit and credit cards through a partnership with Visa, and the Spark ecosystem, which enables digital payments, e-commerce and embedded financial services.
Digital inclusion initiatives allow individuals and micro-businesses to open accounts instantly via mobile, transition from cash to digital operations, improve record-keeping and build the financial data needed for future access to credit. These efforts were recognised with the Global SME Innovation Award 2025 from The Digital Banker.
Beyond products, Absa invests in empowerment programmes. Absa Women Forward supports women-led businesses through mentoring and networking, while financial literacy initiatives tailored for people with disabilities ensure inclusion is practical and accessible.
The bank also mobilises capital for SMEs and green projects through international partnerships. A notable example is the USD 75 million sustainable finance facility secured from Proparco, which supports climate-aligned projects such as solar energy, green buildings and waste-to-resource initiatives. This enables longer tenors and competitive pricing while supporting Mauritius’s green transition.
6. Cybersecurity and operational resilience are critical for modern banks. How is Absa addressing these challenges?
Cybersecurity today is fundamentally about protecting trust. Fraud has evolved into highly organised, cross-border operations that exploit both technology and human behaviour. At Absa, cybersecurity is treated as a strategic risk and a leadership responsibility, not merely an IT issue.
The bank achieved ISO 27001 recertification in 2025, supported by continuous risk assessment, strong governance and real-time monitoring. Significant investment is made in colleague training, simulated attack scenarios and leadership awareness to ensure readiness at every level.
Operational resilience is equally critical. Absa has strengthened system redundancy, cloud resilience and business continuity planning to ensure stability under stress. As digital payments expand, security is embedded by design through multi-factor authentication, encryption, transaction monitoring and partnerships with global payment networks.
Ultimately, cybersecurity at Absa is about maintaining confidence in the financial system and safeguarding long-term stability.
7. Mauritius and the UAE are deepening cooperation in finance and trade. What opportunities does Absa see in this corridor?
The UAE–Mauritius Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement reinforces Mauritius’s role as a gateway for Gulf investment into Africa. Mauritius offers legal certainty, investor protection, free capital movement and a strong network of treaties, making it an attractive platform for Middle East investors.
Absa Mauritius is well positioned to support this corridor by combining local regulatory expertise with Absa Group’s pan-African network. The bank can support UAE-based investors with banking, FX, trade finance and structured solutions across Africa.
There is strong potential in sectors such as renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, tourism and logistics. With its ESG expertise, Absa can help channel Gulf capital into projects that deliver both financial returns and sustainable development outcomes.
8. Finally, what message would you like to share with Khaleej Times readers about Absa Bank Mauritius’s long-term vision?
Absa Bank Mauritius’s long-term vision is to serve as a trusted gateway between global capital and Africa’s growth opportunities, while fostering inclusive and sustainable economic development.
From Mauritius, we combine innovation, disciplined risk management and regional insight to deliver solutions that go beyond traditional banking. We are investing in digital transformation, expanding access to finance, and scaling sustainable finance to support renewable energy, infrastructure and climate-aligned projects.
For investors and entrepreneurs in the Middle East, Absa Bank Mauritius offers a secure, transparent and sophisticated platform to access Africa’s most dynamic sectors. Our commitment is clear: to be a trusted partner that transforms ambition into tangible outcomes, creating lasting value for our clients, our communities and the economies we serve.
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