TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, July 25. Moody’s Ratings has upgraded the long-term local and foreign currency deposit ratings of Uzbekistan's Kapitalbank JSCB from B2 to B1, with a positive outlook, Trend reports.
The agency also raised the bank’s Baseline Credit Assessment (BCA) and Adjusted BCA from b2 to b1, and upgraded its long-term Counterparty Risk Ratings (CRRs) and Counterparty Risk Assessment (CRA) from B1 to Ba3. Short-term ratings were affirmed at Not Prime (NP).
The upgrade reflects Kapitalbank’s consistently strong financial performance, driven by solid profitability, improved capitalization, stable funding, and robust liquidity. In 2024, the bank reported a return on tangible assets of 3.9 percent, supported by healthy margins and fee income, particularly in the retail and SME sectors, which together account for 80 percent of the loan portfolio.
Moody’s highlights the bank’s strategic shift toward more moderate and sustainable growth, with lending increasing by just 7 percent in 2024 and 10.7 percent in the first half of 2025 — a significant slowdown compared to the rapid expansion seen between 2020 and 2023.
Kapitalbank’s capital position strengthened, with its tangible common equity to risk-weighted assets (TCE/RWA) ratio rising to 11 percent in 2024, and further improvement to 12 percent expected in 2025. Asset quality remains manageable, with Stage 3 loans at 4.5 percent of gross loans at year-end 2024, and projected to stabilize at around 6 percent.
The positive outlook reflects Kapitalbank’s increasing systemic importance in Uzbekistan. As of June 1, 2025, it was the sixth-largest bank by total assets (6 percent market share), largest by retail deposits (18 percent market share), and second-largest by total deposits (11 percent). It has also been officially designated as a systemically important bank.
Further upgrades are possible if asset quality strengthens and capital buffers grow, while a downgrade could follow material deterioration in profitability or credit quality.
