Best bank: Standard Bank
Standard Bank Malawi delivered disciplined execution across segments in 2025, despite a difficult operating environment characterised by widening trade deficits, critically low reserves and foreign exchange liquidity constraints.
It is the market leader in loans and advances, with a 21.8% market share as of September 2025, while also holding a strong position in deposits and foreign currency accounts.
Its corporate and investment banking activities are a particular area of strength. Standard Bank was active in key strategic corporate transactions such as the MWK40 billion ($23 million) term loan facility to Castel Malawi, which financed a new assembly plant and bottling machinery, reducing foreign currency exposure from imported malt. That transaction was significant for its size and for showing the bank’s willingness to support large-ticket capex requirements for a major multinational while aligning the financing with import substitution and production efficiency.
Other significant transactions in 2025 included a MWK57 billion overdraft facility to Coca-Cola Beverages Africa to support working capital, as well as a $78 million letter of credit line to the National Oil Company of Malawi at a time of acute fuel shortages, using a structure that combined hedging products and international bank confirmations to maintain supplier confidence despite weak foreign exchange liquidity. Standard Bank thus combines largescale balance sheet support with transaction structures tailored to client cashflow, collateral and supply chain realities.
In retail, Standard Bank reset its Personal Banking Customer Value Proposition in 2025, prioritising a service ethos called Service in Motion, which uses digital channels to make it simple for clients to bank. The bank’s Executive Banking CVP reset also broadened the proposition for higher-value clients with an unrivalled gold card, bancassurance cover for motor, travel and household insurance, financing for renewable energy solutions, enhanced lending terms, shares-secured lending, and access to investment and offshore banking.
