Standard & Poor's Agency has raised Kapital Bank's ratings

Standard & Poor's international rating agency revised Kapital Bank's rating from "stable" to "positive" and affirmed its "BB-/B" ratings. This rating is one of the highest among the banks of the country.

According to the Agency, Kapital Bank will further strengthen its market leadership in system-wide retail loans and deposits in 2019-2020 and will remain the first-choice bank for keeping funds and taking loans in case of need for different entities. It is expected that the bank will maintain a sufficiently high capital buffer, with a RAC (Rrisk-Adjusted Capital) ratio remaining of 7.8%-8.0% over the next 12-18 months.

Loan portfolio growth will be 20%-30% in the next two years. Furthermore, the bank will likely maintain solid profitability, with ROAE exceeding 25% over the forecast horizon, due to a sustainably high net interest margin (NIM), modest credit losses, and good operational efficiency. The Agency said that Kapital Bank's asset quality is good and stronger than that of peers in Azerbaijan. In 2018, the bank reduced nonperforming loans (NPLs), with Stage 3 (under International Financial Reporting Standards) loans of 4.6% at year-end 2018. According to the Agency, Kapital Bank's key funding and liquidity metrics remain solid. The bank's stable funding ratio stood at 220% as of Dec. 31, 2018, while its loan-to-deposit metric was about 46%.

Kapital Bank, having the biggest branch network in Azerbaijan, is at the service of customers with 99 branches and 13 departments. For more detailed information about the Bank’s products and services, please refer to www.kapitalbank.az website, 196 Call Centre or the Bank’s various social network pages.