AMBANK EYES 3-4 PC LOAN GROWTH
Lender may extend moratorium past September but only to customers that meet its criteria, says Sulaiman
AMMB Holdings Bhd (AmBank) has set a loan growth target of three to four per cent for the current financial year ending March 31 next year.
This is higher than the expected industry’s average of 0.4 to 2.5 per cent expansion this year.
The lender achieved a five per cent growth in its last financial year.
AmBank group chief executive officer Datuk Sulaiman Mohd Tahir said the conservative target was due to uncertainties arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, he said the bank was confident of achieving the target as it continued to see rapid recovery in business activities, especially among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and players in the manufacturing industry.
“Achieving our target will depend on the system growth as a whole. Recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic will take time.
“We certainly hope that it will be a V-shape recovery and we are already seeing positive signs.
“New applicants have been coming in and we hope that this will continue,” he said at a virtual press conference on AmBank’s financial year 2020 results, here, yesterday.
Sulaiman said the bank might consider extending the six-month loan moratorium past September but added that this would depend on customers meeting the bank’s criteria.
He said to date, about 637,000 of its customers had opted for the moratorium.
The lender had also approved about RM800 million of additional financing to about 1,000 SME customers via the Special Relief Facility since March.
Meanwhile, AmBank’s net profit fell 10.9 per cent to RM1.34 billion for the year ended March 31 from RM1.51 billion previously, although revenue increased 2.2 per cent to RM9.32 billion from RM9.12 billion previously.
Sulaiman said the lower profit was due to an impairment during the fourth quarter of the year.
The group’s fourth-quarter net profit decreased 46.1 per cent to RM247.54 million from RM459.67 million previously while group revenue slipped 5.1 per cent to RM2.21 billion from RM2.33 billion a year ago.