Institute of Bankers has hailed Sparc Systems Limited and Oracle for supporting the institute with K5 million ahead of the Lake Conference set to run from Thursday to Saturday at Nkopola Lodge.
The chief executive officer for the institute, Lyness Nkungula, said the conference is important as it will tackle issues affecting the banking sector.
“The conference is very important because we are talking about financial inclusion which is an issue both locally and globally. We need to reach out to customers and also Malawi population for them to start saving and investing,” she said.
Nkungula said the support from the two firms is timely as the body is required to raise about K80 million to successfully stage the conference.
“We thank Sparc Systems and Oracle for this gesture because K5 million is a lot of money. But it pleased them to give us this money so we can plan for this conference.
Our entire budget for the conference is pegged at around K80 million and we are optimistic to raise because clients are still paying,” she said.
Sparc Systems Head of Sales and Marketing, Alena Chiwaya, said jointly with their partner they decided to support the conference because it seeks to address issues affecting the banking sector.
“We are pumping in K5 million on 50-50 basis. As Sparcs we have partnered Oracle because our partners have diverse umbrella of solutions that do cater for the banking sector. The banking industry is one of the major clients that we have so we had to support,” she said.
Chiwaya also explained that Sparc Systems is an authorized company to execute high level of works and on hardware and other Oracle technologies on behalf of Oracle in Malawi.
Oracle Territory Account Manager, Maria Seedat, said they want to support local economy hence the support.
“At Oracle we believe it is important to grow the local economy so we work with the channel. Banking is the core of economy and we hope to assist them with technology in future,” she said.
