In August 2020, FirstRand received $235 million in MIGA guarantees to unlock liquidity across 7 African countries, including Botswana, Eswatini, Ghana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zambia.
MIGA's support will strengthen the capital positioning of each of FirstRand's subsidiaries in the host countries, and help promote asset growth in the region. It will also enable FirstRand to provide additional credit mitigation and protection as well as minimize the negative impact of Basel III capital requirements for sovereign exposures.
Most importantly, MIGA's coverage allows for deployment of the resultant capital relief to support cross-border lending, organic growth in country or facilitate any re-capitalization to meet in-country minimum regulatory capital requirements.