KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 22 — AMMB Holdings Bhd (AmBank) expects loan growth of 6.5 per cent to 7.0 per cent for the second half (H2) of its financial year ending March 31, 2019 ( FY19) against 3.8 per cent achieved in the first half year (H1).
Group Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Sulaiman Mohd Tahir, said with this growth, the group would be on track to achieve its six per cent loan growth target for FY19, and this was projected to outpace the estimated industry performance of around five per cent.
“Unless things happened differently in the second half, we expect to outpace the industry growth.
“We are particularly outpacing in the area that we want to grow especially in Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) segment, mid-corporate as well as retail SME. Whereas in large corporate segment it was a bit subdued,” he told reporters after announcing the company’s first-half FY19 results here today.
Overall, he said the outlook for Malaysia remained positive, albeit the expected slower economic growth in the near term, with a projected Gross Domestic Product growth of around 4.6 per cent for 2018.
With inflation and unemployment levels expected to remain moderate, he said this should underpin loans growth for the banking industry.
He noted that AmBank Group also performed well in H1 FY19 with encouraging progress particularly in terms of revenue growth and cost take out.
For the third quarter in a row the group achieved an income of more than RM1 billion with the momentum coming from the net interest income, which increased 5.3 per cent year-on-year in H1 FY19 to RM1.29 billion, driven by consistent loans and deposit growth.
Expense control and business efficiency also remained the group’s key focus with overall expense falling 8.7 per year-on-year to RM1.02 billion, said Sulaiman.
He said the group targeted RM300 million in cost savings by 2020 and had achieved RM150 million savings in FY18 through Mutual Separation Scheme exercise and its ongoing Business Efficiency Target (BET300) programme.
The group is expected to save another RM100 million in FY19 and another RM50 million in 2020, he said, adding these would partly be reinvested further to strengthen the group infrastructure particularly via new digital initiatives. — Bernama
