KUWAIT CITY: Commercial Bank of Kuwait announced net profit of KD 16.7 million up by 26 percent for the six months period of 2015 compared with KD 13.2 million of last year. The operating profit before provision was KD 53.0 million compared to KD 49.5 million for the same period during last year, a growth of 7.0 percent.The bank witnessed a growth in dividend income by 151 percent and the fee income by 7 percent. Commenting on the bank’s financial results, Yaqoub Al-Ebrahim , the official spokesman said Commercial Bank’s total assets at the end of June 2015 reached KD 4.3 billion (June 2014: KD 4.0 billion). The customer deposit has witnessed significant growth of 11 percent during 1H. The banks’ capital adequacy ratio at the end of June 2015 at 18.26 percent is higher than the minimum 12 percent required by the Central Bank of Kuwait, and leverage ratio at 10.4 percent is more than 3 times higher than the minimum requirement of 3 percent.
The bank continues to maintain the lowest non-performing loans (NPL) ratio at 0.88 percent as at 30th June 2015 which is one of the lowest in banking sector in Kuwait. Al-Ebrahim further commented that the bank’s strategic objectives to diversify its income sources and mitigation of risks, particularly those related to geographical and sector concentration are being pursued in letters and spirit. This strategy bore its fruit and will continue yielding benefits in future also. The loans portfolio diversified by reducing concentration in higher risk sectors and dependency on hot money reduced by securing long term deposits. He pointed that the significant improvement in the bank’s financial indicators is due to its prudent policy to use the operating profits to build the provisions and aggressive policy of write off adopted to clean the loan portfolio and reduce the NPL ratio lower than the industry average.
