November 9 (SeeNews) - The net profit of ING Bank Romania grew 35% year-on-year to 391 million lei ($98 million/84 million euro) in the first nine months of 2017 on the back of strong lending and deposit growth, the bank said on Thursday.
The loan portfolio increased 24% year-on-year to 21.1 billion lei, boosting the bank's market share to 8.9% in the nine months through September, from 7.5% in the year-ago period, ING Bank Romania said in a press release.
Deposits grew 21% on the year to 25 billion lei, equal to a market share of 8.3%.
"2017 was a year of premieres and we are enjoying the positive reaction of our customers to new products and services. For example, the concept of zero commissions in the Full Card offer has attracted customers' attention and many of them have moved their salaries to ING," ING Bank Romania CEO, Michal Szczurek, said.
Over 750,000 customers who have used Home'Bank in the first nine months have accessed their account once every three days, mostly using their smartphone.
Over the first nine months of 2017, ING Bank Romania has attracted more than 120,000 new active clients, taking the total number of ING Romania's active customers to 1.1 million.
The bank's revenues grew 22% on the year to 1.059 billion lei in January-September, while its operating costs rose 14% to 535 million lei due to stepped-up activity, investment in IT infrastructure, regulatory costs and added employees.
Risk costs amounted to 65 million, up 21% compared to the first nine months of 2016.
The NPL ratio was 3.6% at the end of the first nine months of 2017, lower than 4.5% a year earlier.
The consolidated net profit of ING Bank Romania surged 42% to 474 million lei last year, mainly due to increased lending and the sale of Visa shares. In June 2016, the U.S.-based credit card company Visa Inc. took over Visa Europe in a 21.2 billion euro ($24.8 billion) transaction, hoping to achieve a greater scale in the payments market while cutting costs.
ING Bank Romania is a unit of Dutch banking group ING, which entered the Romanian market in 1994 and started developing its retail business in the country in 2004.
ING Group is a global international financial institution that provides banking services to more than 34 million individual clients, companies or institutions in over 40 countries. Its net profit edged down 0.3% on the year to 3.89 billion euro in the first nine months of 2017.
(1 euro=4.6279 lei)