BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 3. Azerbaijani AccessBank is set to maintain focus on business segments until the end of the year, Chairman of the Management Board of AccessBank Davit Tsiklauri told Trend.
"AccessBank continues the successful work started in 2022 and 2023, driven by the growth of Azerbaijan's banking and financial system. The country's economic indicators also show positive dynamics, and we see active development in almost all sectors, especially in the non-oil industries where we are actively present," he said.
He claims that AccessBank's surprise placement as the fifth biggest bank in terms of business and loan portfolio volume during the first half of the year was a nice surprise.
"We have focused on supporting small enterprises, and we note that their activity is growing across the entire territory of Azerbaijan. In the regions, our market share is higher than in Absheron, where competition among banks is much more intense. Nevertheless, in the regions, we are seeing stable growth in our active client base," he emphasized.
Tsiklauri spilled the beans that in the first half of 2024, the loan portfolio shot up by eight percent.
"The results in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector were particularly impressive, with its portfolio increasing by 17 percent, and the micro-portfolio, which constitutes a significant part of our business, growing by 10 percent. The main driver of the eight percent growth was the business segment, which exceeded this figure.
We plan to maintain this focus on business in the coming years. Although the overall sector growth has somewhat slowed compared to previous years, this is not a problem, as the growth in the last two years has been quite aggressive. Now the market has reached a state of stability, and we expect this trend to continue," he noted.
The chairman of the board highlighted the continued stability of AccessBank's performance in various parameters..
"The bank's capital base is growing, and the capital adequacy ratio is also improving. A pleasant surprise was the reduction in costs to below 55 percent of total income. In the next 12 months, we expect to overcome the 50 percent threshold, which is an important psychological level. We are confident that our further development will proceed in a sustainable manner while maintaining healthy financial indicators," he concluded.