Singapore unit helps Maybank deliver solid half-time earnings

SINGAPORE - Maybank Singapore mirrored the performance of its parent for the first half year, delivering a pretax profit of $209.1 million, up 5.6 per cent.

At the group level, Maybank achieved a 5.7 per cent rise in pretax profit to RM4.45 billion ($1.75 billion) for the six months ended June 30, on continued growth in its international operations, particularly in Singapore, and consumer banking business.

Group net profit rose by 3.4 per cent to RM3.18 billion.

In Singapore, operating profit climbed by 21 per cent to S$228.5 million while net income rose a hefty 18.6 per cent.

This was driven by a 20.4 per cent growth in fee based income and a 17.5 per cent increase in fund based income.

Growth in fee based income was led by the treasury, wealth management and trade finance segments while fund based income was boosted by improvements in both loans margins and loan base, said Maybank Singapore in a statement.

Loans rose by 14.6 per cent on an annualised basis, spurred by a strong uplift in business loans, which grew 17.1 per cent while consumer loans increased by 9.6 per cent.

Asset quality remained excellent with the net impaired loan ratio improving further to 0.2 per cent from 0.30 per cent a year ago.

Meanwhile, efforts to increase group deposits through strategic retail deposit-taking across key markets bore fruit as its pace picked up in the second quarter, with Singapore registering a 3.1 per cent rise year-on-year.

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