ArmInfo. In 2016 INECOBANK despite the upcoming huge amount of work on integration and consolidation of portfolios of the two banks (the matter relates to ProCredit Armenia) intends to increase loan portfolio by 5-8%, Commercial Director of INECOBANK Aram Baloyan told ArmInfo's correspondent.
According to him, INECOBANK due to merging with ProCredit Armenia took the leadership on the market of crediting to SME ensuring 70% growth of portfolio, in which 60% are share of business loans of ProCredit Armenia. As of now the merged bank has 20-22% share in total portfolio of the whole banking system of the country, while the client portfolio totaled around 5 thousand representatives of SMEs. "Last year alone INECOBANK provided around 1.3 thousand business loans. The share of the merged ProCredit Armenia was approximately the same. I think we will retain such number of clients in 2016 as well", he noted.
In this context Baloyan also stated that enlargement allowed the bank implementing corresponding investments and efficient programs, as a result of which prime cost of banking service will reduce due to decline of operating expenses. At the same time the Bank intends to improve a number of internal procedures, optimize the process of receiving more detailed information about the client aimed at quickening the process of making decision on giving a loan and minimizing document flow.
To note, founded in 1996, INECOBANK CJSC is a dynamically developing bank on the financial market of Armenia. The bank is in TOP-3 by SME lending portfolio ensuring 75.8 bln AMD by 1 Jan 2016 (almost 48% from the total loan portfolio of the bank) which is 2-fold higher than last year's indicator. In Q4 alone the growth of SME credit portfolio increased 2.1- fold, which was mainly determined by the process of merging with ProCredit Armenia Bank, the portfolio of which on SME totaled 36.7 bln AMD. INECOBANK successfully cooperates with international structures on various programs, including on lending to SME. The credit portfolio of INECOBANK totaled 159.6 bln AMD or 67.5% of the bank's assets by 1 Jan 2016. In y-o-y terms the total credit portfolio of INECOBANK grew by 42% and only in Q4 by 53.2%.