“The bank earned 11% of the profit gained by the whole Belarusian banking system,” says director-general Galina Kukhorenko. Its return on equity of 23% is also the highest among the locally owned banks.
To finance its continued expansion, shareholders agreed to an equity capital increase of about 7% in June 2008, and the bank has also worked hard to gain access to international debt capital markets. With a rating assigned by Standard & Poor’s in June 2008, BPS became a first Belarus bank to have ratings from the three major agencies. Its profile has helped secure financing even as global credit markets froze over – four western European banks provided a syndicated loan of $40m in April 2008.
At home, meanwhile, BPS has embarked on a computerisation project that replaced paper payment orders for 1900 corporate clients in just six months in 2008, and will now allow the launch of a remote banking system. Combined with centralisation of the payment systems, these changes will also permit retail customers to carry out transactions in any branch of the bank, rather than just at the branch where the account was opened.
“Among the bank’s top priorities for 2009 is an increase of performance efficiency via implementation of new management technologies and enhancement of corporate governance,” says Ms Kukhorenko.
