BREAKING: Annet Nakawunde Set to Join Centenary Bank Malawi as Managing Director

Annet Nakawunde Mulindwa, the long-serving Managing Director of Finance Trust Bank, is set to join Centenary Bank Malawi as its new Managing Director, CEO East Africa Magazine has exclusively learnt.

Sources familiar with the appointment say Nakawunde is expected to take up the position in November 2026, ending a nearly 15-year tenure at Finance Trust Bank and handing her responsibility for one of Centenary Group’s most important regional subsidiaries.

According to the sources, the appointment has received the necessary regulatory clearances from the Bank of Uganda and the Reserve Bank of Malawi. CEO East Africa had not independently reviewed the approval documents by publication time, while the appointment had also not yet been formally announced by either bank.

Nakawunde will succeed Beatrix Mosiwa, who is serving as Centenary Bank Malawi’s acting Managing Director. Mosiwa, previously the bank’s Deputy Managing Director, assumed interim leadership after Godfrey Byekwaso left the Malawi operation to become Managing Director of Centenary Bank Uganda in July 2026.

Sources say Finance Trust Bank has started an internal recruitment process as it prepares for Nakawunde’s departure. It was not immediately clear whether the institution would appoint a successor from within its executive team or consider external candidates.

The eventual successor will inherit a profitable institution with more than 400,000 savers, over 40,000 borrowers and a nationwide network concentrated largely in rural and peri-urban communities.

Nakawunde joined Finance Trust in 2007 and became chief executive in 2011, when the institution was still operating as a microfinance deposit-taking institution. She subsequently led its transition into a Tier I commercial bank in 2013 and, more recently, its strategic move into the Tier II credit-institution segment.

Her expected appointment in Malawi reflects her experience in microfinance, mass-market lending and building financial services around women, small businesses and customers at the lower end of the income pyramid.

That background closely fits Centenary Group’s broader strategy. Both its Ugandan and Malawian operations are strongly associated with financial inclusion, agricultural finance, microfinance and services targeted at rural and underserved communities.

Nakawunde will leave Finance Trust substantially larger than the institution she inherited.

Between 2011 and 2025, total assets increased 7.25 times, equivalent to a compound annual growth rate of about 15.2%. Customer deposits grew 9.8 times at a CAGR of approximately 17.7%, while net loans and advances expanded 8.61 times at a CAGR of about 16.6%.

Finance Trust’s profit after tax reached UGX18.1 billion in 2025, up 74.4% from UGX10.4 billion in 2024. Its audited 2025 accounts show UGX668 billion in assets, UGX451.7 billion in customer deposits and UGX397 billion in net loans and advances.

The figures illustrate the experience Nakawunde brings to Malawi: mobilising deposits from a broad customer base, expanding lending while preserving an inclusion-focused model, and guiding a regulated institution through major structural transitions.

Centenary Bank Malawi emerged from Centenary Group’s acquisition and transformation of MyBucks Banking Corporation Malawi. The bank has since been pursuing growth, improved profitability and a stronger position in Malawi’s retail and inclusive-finance market.

Nakawunde’s immediate challenge will be to build on that turnaround while deepening customer acquisition, expanding lending to households and small businesses, strengthening digital channels and maintaining regulatory and operational discipline.

Her move also marks a significant regional appointment for a Ugandan banking executive whose career began at the grassroots, working directly with small borrowers and women in markets and rural communities.

For Finance Trust Bank, the transition brings an equally important leadership test: finding a successor capable of protecting the institution’s women-focused heritage while sustaining growth after one of the longest chief-executive tenures in Uganda’s financial-services industry.