Ahli Bank Q1 profit jumps 56%

The total assets stood at OR321m as at the end of March 2008, which was almost a 90% growth of the total assets from OR169m as at the end of March 2007.

Customer deposits increased to OR184m at 31 March 2008 from OMR 66 million at 31 March 2007. Loans and Advances reached OR267m as compared to OMR 156 million last year.

Ahli Bank CEO, Mr. AbdulAziz Al Balushi said the bank's strong performance has built the foundation for better results in the future.

"In the first three months of 2008, since the re-branding of our bank with a new identity Ahli Bank, the bank has made significant progress in building its retail and corporate business, diversifying its portfolio through catering to the demands of the corporate businesses in Oman while carefully differentiating the needs of the premium and private banking segments as well as the SME segment. The first quarter results pave the way forward in building and gradually accelerating the bank's growth and development with focus on customer orientation delivered with unrelenting expertise and innovative ideas."

"The Bank has successfully launched new Deposit products and Loan Products which are competing with the best products in the market. By encouraging growth and innovation at all levels of the organisation, we will be ready to seize any opportunity that Oman's growing economy will provide and we will continue to remain focused on our clients with the ultimate objective to build shareholder value," he added.

Attributing the better results to the continuous IT sophistication implemented in the core banking system, he added, "Ahli Bank firmly believes that Technology is one of the biggest differentiators in the marketplace and we believe costs incurred in creating a robust delivery capability are an investment adding value by way of service quality."

The Corporate Governance structure as approved by the Board of Directors has been implemented with duly approved policies and the process is ongoing to review procedures to further enhance the controls.

Risk Management is at the centre of all business planning and therefore the bank has revamped the Risk Department to support the new commercial business model.

Ahli Bank's branches are being refurbished to better service customers and in this quarter all the branches with be equipped with ATM machines for convenience. Further, plans in future include build more and alternate channels to reach out to customers across the Sultanate of Oman.