Bank of Bhutan (BoB) made a profit over Nu 1bn last year, making history among financial institutes in the country.
In 2017, they made net profit of Nu 790mn and in 2018 they made profit of Nu 1.4bn.
During Druk Holding and Investments’ (DHI) annual press conference on Tuesday, the DHI Chairman, Dasho Ugen Chhewang said that BoB continues to impress its customers with its products and services.
Dasho mentioned that BoB has introduced ‘senior citizen priority counters’ across all branch offices, ‘banking on-wheels’ service in Thimphu to cater to its growing population and ‘a 24/7 network operation center’ to improve service reliability. These new services garnered a lot of goodwill from the clients.
“The best was when the bank closed its accounts for the year with a bottom line figure that crossed a Nu 1bn for the first time in its history. Further, the bank’s dividend contribution to DHI in FY2018 also increased by 15%,” said the Chairman.
The Chief Executive Officer of the BoB, Dorji Kadin said the profit is mainly attributed in terms of growth in loan portfolio relative to previous year.
He said that the bank made profit after tax over Nu 1bn in last year and keeping the gross Non-Performance Assets to an all-time low of 2.87%.
The bank loan in 2018 was 33.87% and in 2017 it was 26.70%.
Deposits from customers continued to increase from Nu 42.84bn in 2017 to Nu 46.48bn in 2018.
The total capital and reserves increased by 11.6% in 2018. It increased from Nu 6.3bn in 2017 to Nu 7bn in 2018.
According to the BoB annual report non-performing loan (NPL) in 2018 was Nu 1.04bn. The total loan disbursed last year was Nu 36.4bn.
The report also states that the highest loan disbursed was to housing which amounted to Nu 10.3bn and the highest NPL was also from housing amounting to Nu 0.36bn.
In 2018, BoB opened three new branch offices and one extension counter. BoB has 52 branch offices so far.
Last year, BoB introduced Senior citizen priority counter across all branch offices;Banking on Wheels – functional in Thimphu; implemented Network Operations Center manned 24×7;launchedChharo; implemented Chat bot website and Customer feedback terminals in Thimphu Main Branch and Phuentsholing Main Branch; and formed Tshongdrel Ngotshab; and Cheque deposit facility from BoB Connect.
BoB has about 260 agents across the country and 120 Tshongdrel Ngothab (Independent Sales Representative).
Dechen Dolkar from Thimphu
