Financial Services

Excess short-term liquidity is a chronic challenge for banks operating in Central Africa, creating significant mismatches between the maturity of liabilities and the economy’s longer-term needs. Banks now account for about 85% of financial assets in the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (Communauté Économique des États de l’Afrique Centrale, CEMAC);...

Despite the high level of competition in Gabon’s insurance market, strong margins and steady growth in the last five years continue to attract new players. Most recently, Wafa Assurance, Morocco’s main insurance provider by market share, signalled in March 2014 that it plans to launch operations in Gabon and three other countries in the Central Africa region.

Home to 1.63m people, Gabon has one of the most dynamic insurance markets in Central and West Africa. Although personal lines are beginning to expand, sector development has been driven by large-scale industrial operations. The domestic financial sector does not have the capacity to fully underwrite major industrial and transport risks, but operators circumvent this...

The regional stock exchange based in Gabon is beginning to see an uptick in activity. Since the first listing in 2008, the market has been dominated by bonds. This is in part a result of factors common across most African economies: limited transparency among eligible corporates, for example, and a preference to avoid diluting ownership – both of which limit the number...

As a bastion of liquidity within the financially turbulent Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (Communauté Économique des États de l’Afrique Centrale, CEMAC), Gabon competes head-on with the more populous Cameroon for the title of regional banking centre. While its lenders enjoy a cash surplus – total bank credit of CFA2.4trn (€3.6bn) accounted for 23.3% of...