ArmInfo. The active lending in the Armenian banking sector is driving double-digit growth in net profit. According to the Express Ranking of Armenian Banks as of September 30, 2025, prepared by ArmInfo Investment Company, credit investments and other loans saw a year-on-year increase from 22% to 26.2%. This growth allowed net profit to continue its double-digit growth, although at a slower pace, going from 25% to 15%. The total volume of credit investments and other loans reached 7.3 trillion drams ($19 billion), resulting in a net profit of 308 billion drams ($805 million) for the nine month reporting period.
This lending activity spurred annual asset growth from 16% to 18%, reaching 12 trillion drams (over $31 billion). Within this structure, the share of credit investments increased from 57% to 61% over the year, while investments in securities decreased from 19% to 18%. This is despite the acceleration of annual growth in investments in securities from 5.3% to 13.1%, reaching 2.1 trillion drams ($5.5 billion). Total liabilities also accelerated in annual growth from 15.3% to 18.3%, exceeding 9.9 trillion drams ($26 billion). Within this structure, the share of liabilities to clients decreased slightly from 70% to 69%, while liabilities to banks and other financial institutions, on the contrary, increased slightly from 25% to 26%. Moreover, the volume of liabilities to clients accelerated in year-on-year growth from 12% to 16%, amounting to 6.8 trillion drams ($18 billion), and liabilities to banks and other financial institutions - from 20% to 22%, amounting to 2.5 trillion drams ($6.6 billion). These dynamics across the main components of assets and liabilities drove nearly identical year-on-year growth in interest income and expenses, of 21.1% and 22.2%, respectively, to $2 billion and $861.2 million. Additionally, there was a relatively moderate growth in non-interest income and expenses at 14.1% and 18.7%, respectively, reaching $698 million and $814 million. This can be attributed to the fact that the dominant interest income and expense items- lending and customer liabilities-continued to show double-digit growth, which was not observed in the main non-interest income and expense items-card transactions and money transfers.
Total capital, repeating last year's trend, increased again by 17% to AMD 2 trillion ($5.3 billion). Within this total, the share of authorized capital increased from 47% to 49% over the year, while accumulated profit decreased from 45% to 44%. The absolute values of these amounts amounted to 984 billion drams ($2.6 billion) and 887.3 billion drams ($2.3 billion), respectively. Specifically, accumulated profit slowed in year-on-year growth from 23% to 13%, while authorized capital accelerated its growth rate from 12.2% to 19.3%. The latter was due to the replenishment of their authorized capital by six banks: Ardshinbank (by 95.2% in the second quarter of 2025), AMIO Bank (by 11.8% in the first quarter of 2025), Acba Bank (by 64.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024), IDBank (by 43.7% in the third quarter of 2025), Armeconombank (by 5.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024) and Unibank (by 11.6% in the second quarter of 2025).
The top 5 banks in the banking sector, as measured by key balance sheet indicators, remained unchanged
In terms of assets, the top five banks, with a total coverage of 61%, are Ardshinbank, Ameriabank, Acba Bank, AMIO Bank, and INECOBANK. In terms of loan investments, the leaders, with a total coverage of 65%, are also Ameriabank, Ardshinbank, Acba Bank, AMIO Bank, and INECOBANK. In terms of securities investments, the top 5 are Ardshinbank, Ameriabank, AMIO Bank, ArmSwissBank, and INECOBANK, with a total coverage of over 55%. In terms of customer liabilities, Ardshinbank, Ameriabank, Acba Bank, INECOBANK, and AMIO Bank account for a combined 64% and in terms of total capital, Ardshinbank, Ameriabank, AMIO Bank, Acba Bank, and INECOBANK account for a combined 58%. In terms of net profit for the first nine months of 2025, Ardshinbank holds the lead, followed by Ameriabank. Acba Bank comes in third, INECOBANK in fourth, and Evocabank in fifth. These five banks collectively generate approximately 72% of the sector's profits.
Note that with the entry of Fast Bank in November 2022, the number of banks in Armenia reached 18, but later in 2024, with the exit of HSBC, the number of banks dropped again to 17. In 2024, Ardshinbank acquired HSBC Bank Armenia. With HSBC's exit from Armenia, instead of four, three subsidiaries of foreign banks now operate in the country's banking sector: VTB (Russia), Mellat (Iran), and Byblos Bank (Lebanon). Furthermore, the presence of international institutional investors, represented by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which had stakes in Ameriabank, has also decreased. Specifically, with the addition of Bank of Georgia Group PLC (BOGG) and JSC Bank of Georgia to Ameriabank's shareholding, with a combined 90% stake, the EBRD's stake was reduced to 10%, and ADB's stake was reduced to zero.
(The dram/US dollar exchange rate as of September 30, 2025, was AMD 382.52 /$1.)
