Hanoi (VNA) – The Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development(Agribank) has been recently named in the top 500 strongest banks (AB500) inAsia-Pacific by the Asian Banker.

Agribank ranked 156th on the AB500, which is a study of the financial and business performance of thecommercial banking industry in Asia-Pacific. The study comprises two differentlists: the first ranks the top 500 banks in the region by asset size, whilethe second ranks the same banks by strength, or long-term profitability fromits core businesses.

Being Vietnam’s largest bank in terms of deposits and networks, the bankhas 938 branches, 1,297 transaction offices, 2,845 Automated Teller Machines(ATMs), 46 Autobanks and 20,781 Point of Sale (POS) locations nationwide.

In 2018, the bank’s pre-tax profit reached a record high of 7.53 trillion VND (324.56million USD), much higher than its set target of 5.7 trillion VND (245.7million USD), affirming its key role in the rural financial market in Vietnam.The bank had total assets of nearly 1.3 quadrillion VND (55.98 billion USD) andtotal capital of 1.2 quadrillion VND (51.58 billion USD).

The bank is planning to launch its initial public offering (IPO) in 2020 toincrease chartered capital.

In January 2019, Moody’s Investors Service assigned first-time Ba3 deposit andissuer ratings to the bank after it made significant progress in cleaning uplegacy problem assets in the past five years, with material improvements in thesecond half of 2018.

Besides Agribank, Vietcombank, Techcombank, BIDV, VietinBank, MB,LienVietPostBank, ACB, VPBank, HDBank, SHB, Sacombank, Eximbank and SCB also madethemselves on the AB500 list.

The Asian Banker annually releases its AB500 ranking,an evaluation based on a belief that a strong bank demonstrates long-termprofitability from its core businesses.

It ranks more than 700 banks from the Asia Pacific region and 300banks from the Middle East and Central Asia. The focus of the list is oncommercial banks and financial holding companies, with a significant proportionof activity in commercial banking.

The AB500 does not include central banks, policy banks, investment banks orfinance companies that lack significant deposit-taking franchises or commerciallending businesses.
The Asian Banker’s main sources of data are annual bank reportsand statistics provided by central banks or industry associations. In theabsence of up-to-date annual reports, the organisation contacts banks directlyto source financial results.-VNA