Kenya's Britam Holdings swings to full-year loss

Kenya's Britam Holdings swung to a 1.19 billion shilling ($11.77 million) loss in 2015 from a 3.21 billion shilling pretax profit the previous year, hit by falling asset values because of a slowdown in securities markets.

The diversified financial services company, formerly British-American Investments Company (Kenya), said on Tuesday that revenue from insurance rose 40 percent to 19.6 billion shillings. lifting total revenue 38 percent to 20.32 billion shillings.

Insurance is seen as a growth area in Kenya, where less than 10 percent of the population has any form of cover.

Britam incurred a loss of 2.84 billion shillings on its financial assets from a gain of 4.1 billion shillings in 2014.

"Notably, the downturn in the securities market has impacted the fair value of the financial assets," it said in a statement.

The Nairobi Securities Exchange's main NSE-20 Index lost 20 percent last year.

Britam said that total assets rose to 77.63 billion shillings from 72.45 billion shillings, while it posted a loss per share of 0.5 shillings from 1.31 shillings in 2014 and recommended a dividend payment of 0.3 shillings, unchanged from the previous year.

The company also has operations in Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Mozambique and Malawi.