This provides the funding for a continued expansion strategy in a dynamic economy, with the bank’s assets rising by 54% in 2007, and profits up a striking 114%.
Cost control has played a significant part in this performance, with the cost-to-income ratio declining to 65.9% in 2007, from 72.6% a year earlier. A growing loan portfolio, rising from 60% to 70% of total assets during 2007, has driven profitability, together with improved returns from non-interest income sources – at 64% of non-interest expenditures in 2007, up sharply from 46% in 2006.
An expansion of the branch network by more than a third, to 28 branches by end-2007, has been crucial in facilitating the rise in loans and in customers for other banking services.
“Along with our geographical growth over all regions of Armenia we are trying to bring our services to the highest quality by making more and more investment in IT,” says ACBA-Credit Agricole CEO Stepan Gishyan. “For this purpose we are currently setting up our corporate network using satellite connections to enable our customers to have access to their accounts from any of the bank’s branches. This corporate network will later enable our customers also to use our home banking services even from remote regions.”
