UCB profit rises 82pc

United Commercial Bank's profit rose 82.05 percent to Tk 192.74 crore in the first six months to June compared to the same period last year.
Comparatively higher recovery of loans and rise in non-interest income boosted the bank's earnings this time, said Muhammed Ali, managing director of the bank. “We are strictly monitoring the loan disbursement process to reduce bad loans.”
UCB's earnings per share stood at Tk 2.30 for the period.
“Operating income of the bank surged 26.9 percent in the period due to robust investment income growth and improved interest margin,” stated BRAC EPL, a stockbroker.
Loans and advances grew 15.17 percent to Tk 16,392 crore in the six months period, while deposit grew 9.27 percent to Tk 18,870 crore.  
The efficiency in managing balance sheet and rise in fee-based incomes helped UCB to generate good profit, said M Habibur Rahman Chowdhury, senior executive vice president and chief financial officer of UCB.
“We are focusing on export and import to boost profit.”
The asset quality did not deteriorate in the period thanks to monitoring, tracking and higher recovery, he said.
“We bought a core banking system from technology giant Oracle. The installation process of the system will end by June next year.”
With the system, UCB could improve product service with better risk management, he said.
A core banking system is the back-end data processing application for processing all transactions that have occurred during the day and posting updated data on account balances to the mainframe.
The share price of the bank stood at Tk 26.40 yesterday.
UCB began operations in 1983 and now has 139 branches with plans to open eight new branches in 2014, he said. The bank also plans to double the number of ATM booths to 200 this year.