AmBank's total income up 2.3% to US$477m

Thanks to higher net interest income and improved NIMs.

AmBank's total income increased by a modest 2.3% YoY to RM1,949.1 million (US$477m) for the half year ended 30 September 2017.

The growth was supported by higher net interest income (NII) (+9.9%) and improved net interest margin (NIM) (+6bps) to 1.99%.

According to Dato’ Sulaiman Mohd Tahir (Dato’ Sulaiman), CEO of AmBank Group, the bank's topline growth momentum was sustained in Transaction Banking, Business & SME Banking and Retail Banking whilst markets based revenue was affected by the volatility in the market.

“The Group recorded an encouraging 9.9% growth YoY in NII supported by interest income from customer lending and fixed income securities. Interest income from customer lending continued to benefit from the robust growth in our targeted segments namely mortgages and the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) segments. Interest income from securities grew mainly from trading securities and investment in unrated corporate bonds and sukuk.” 

Dato’ Sulaiman added that, “Our loans and financing base grew 2.2% YTD since 31 March 2017 to RM93.0 billion underpinned by an increase of RM2,187.7 million (+10.0% YTD) in mortgage loans and RM1.1 billion (+7.6% YTD) in SME loans. As a result of our targeted card usage programmes, our cards receivables contributed RM80.7 million to our loans base, marking an encouraging YTD growth of 4.8%.