Crown Agents Bank has re-hired David Smithson and announced his appointment as a regional banker for East and Southern Africa.

Smithson rejoins the emerging and frontier markets team after a 14-month stint at British Arab Commercial Bank (BACB), and is tasked with deepening Crown Agents Bank’s portfolio of financial institutional clients.

“His extensive experience of Crown Agents Bank’s treasury, international payments and trade finance solutions makes him well positioned to develop our extensive network further,” the lender says in a statement.

Smithson will assume the same UK-based role he vacated just upwards of a year ago, having moved to take on the post of associate director for Anglophone Africa at BACB in April last year.

During his initial spell at Crown Agents, where he served for more than two decades, he also worked with central banks and commercial banks across the continent in front-office treasury roles.

“David returns at a time when the bank is actively upscaling its activities as one of the main global providers of emerging markets FX trading and payments through an ambitious tech-driven strategy,” says Duarte Pedreira, head of emerging and frontier markets.

“His client knowledge will help us accelerate the pace at which we capture flows from and to East and Southern Africa,” Pedreira adds.