March 7 (SeeNews) - Komercijalna Banka [BEL:KMBN], the second largest lender by assets in Serbia, aims to reduce its non-performing loan (NPL) ratio to between 8% and 9% by the end of this year from 13.8% in December 2017, the bank's board member Dejan Tesic has said.
The bank has focused its business strategy on quality customers with a conservative risk appetite which gave positive results in 2017, Tesic, who is also the bank's Chief Market Officer, said in a video file posted on the YouTube channel of Serbia's Economists Council on Tuesday.
The speed of reaction has a crucial importance for the reduction of the NPL ratio and the bank needs to work on simplifying the decision-making procedures, Tesic said on Tuesday during the "NPL- Is there room for further decrease?" discussion panel of the Kopaonik Business Forum in Serbia.
Komercijalna Banka said last week it closed 2017 with a pre-tax profit of 7.187 billion dinars ($75 million/61 million euro). The bank provided no comparative figures but in April it said it had ended 2016 with a loss of 8.063 billion dinars, versus a 6.3 billion dinar loss in the previous year, as net expenses for impairment of financial assets and credit risk off-balance sheet items rose to 14.9 billion dinars from 13 billion dinars.
The Serbian banking sector's non-performing loans (NPL) ratio declined to 11.1% at the end of November, down from 17.03% in December 2016, the country's central bank, NBS, said last week.
(1 euro = 117.984 euro)
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