Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 16
By Azad Hasanli – Trend:
The Kazakh "Eurasian Bank" JSC plans to raise the share of sales through digital channels to 30 percent, Chairman of the Management Board of the Bank Pavel Loginov said in an interview with Trend.
The bank is actively implementing a strategy of digitalization of business, the source told Trend. Speaking about sales in general, he noted that the bank intends to increase this figure to 303 billion tenge in the retail business in 2018.
"POS-crediting, car loans, salary projects, loyalty program remain important for us. As a result, the retail sales for 2016 amounted to 135 billion tenge, and our plan for sales in the retail segment for this year is as much as 303 billion tenge. At the same time, the risk indicators for the retail portfolio are being reduced," Loginov said.
As for the lending to the corporate sector, he continued, due to the lack of rapid economic growth and a small number of good borrowers, this sector is still down and is associated with a high level of risk. But there are positive aspects as well, for example, the high potential of the retail market, Loginov said.
"There are all conditions for the development of retail segment in Kazakhstan. We are building our development strategy with a focus on retail services. Our customer base, with which we are actively working, exceeds 2.5 million. Since the beginning of 2017, the bank's operating profit has increased 3.8 times. We can manage profitability and control risks well, we can sell, identify and focus on profitable segments", he said.
Loginov noted that the bank is also carrying out the work for reduction of the operating costs.
"Our cost to income [the ratio of the operating costs to revenues] indicator in 2017 was about 90 percent. That is, we spent 90 tiyn on one earned tenge [1 tiyn = 100 tenge]. Today, this figure is about 50 percent, and it continues to decline. Our five-year strategic plan envisages its reduction to 32 percent," the chairman of the board said.
Plus, the task of the "Eurasian Bank" is to restructure the balance sheet, equalize obligations in tenge and foreign currency, Loginov said. Today, the bank reduces its dependence on foreign currency liabilities – while the share of foreign currency in liabilities was 70 percent in 2016, now this figure has decreased to 44 percent.
The "Eurasian Bank" based in Kazakhstan, has been operating since 1994. The bank is one of the largest banks in the country and occupies the ninth place in the country in terms of the volume of assets (about $2.69 billion) as of July 1, 2018.
The official exchange rate on August 16 is 361.66 KZT/USD.
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