Kathmandu, February 27:

Nepal Investment Bank Ltd (NIBL), operating under the le-adership of Prithvi B Pande, chairman and chief executive director, has been performing well by adopting modern ban-king practices and taking on the tough competition succe-ssfully in the financial market.

The bank managed by Nepalis is holding its own perfectly vis-a-vis other joint venture banks and other commercial banks. The bank management seems satisfied by its performance and is moving towards sustainability, thanks to its ‘committed bunch of professionals’.

“Banking is not a rocket science,” said Pande while discussing the recent performance of the bank with The Himalayan Times on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the bank. Pande said that banking cannot be done on the basis of balance sheets alone.

The bank has registered a 20 per cent growth during the last fiscal compared to the previous fiscal year, chairman Pande informed. However, he believes that generating profits alone is not ‘enough’ but sustainability is a must.

According to Pande, before the takeover by the Pande group, the bank was operating in a conservative way but in the past four years, it has established a good market niche for itself by adopting modern banking tools and creating shareholders’ value.

Pande informed that in the last fiscal year, the bank had registered about Rs 480 million operating profit, out of which, net profit came to be over Rs 220 million. Similarly, the bank has invested over Rs 12 billion despite weak business and investment climate in recent times. As of today, the deposits of the bank stands at Rs 13 billion. When talking about lending, he said, the situation is very ‘unique’. The bank gives interest of over 2.5 per cent on deposits. “What is troublesome for bankers is that Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has increased Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) to 12 per cent from the earlier 11 per cent which is the highest in South Asia,” he said. At a time when there are no lending opportunities, to increase CAR to 12 per cent instead of bringing it down to 10 per cent, makes survivability very difficult, he added.

The bank devotes its management techniques and money to strength its human resource. According to Pandey, the bank invests over Rs 2.5 million. For boosting the quality of manpower, the bank does not have any ‘objections and constraint’ for spending money, he said. The bank has over Rs 1.36 billion core capital from which the bank earns returns, according to him. NIBL is the only bank to receive the award of ‘Bank of The year 2005’ twice in three years from ‘The Banker’ publication that comes from the UK-based Finance Times Group.

Pande who also worked with the central bank for quite a number of years, observed that healthy competition in the market was the need of the hour to sustain the Nepali banking industry. There is a need to maintain a competitive edge, said he.

What is important in today’s context is that ‘mergers’ have to happen, otherwise banks will have a tough time to survive, particularly from LDC member countries in the context of WTO, Pande said.

NIBL completes 20 years of service

Kathmandu: Nepal Investment Bank Ltd (NIBL) is celebrating its 20 years of service tomorrow. Founded on February 28, 1986 as Nepal Indosuez Bank in a joint venture with Credit Agricole Indosuez of France, the bank changed to Nepal Investment Bank Ltd in 2002. The NIBL has been growing at an unprecedented rate and steadily establishing new banking frontiers in Nepal under a management led by Prithvi B Pande, who is also the chairman of the bank.

Pioneer in various customer services like 365 day banking and Visa Electron debit card, NIBL today has 13 branches across Nepal.

Apart from the normal lending and depository products, NIBL has also introduced innovative new products and schemes like E-ZEE series with an aim to cater to the specific needs of it’s clientele.

NIBL at present holds eight ATMs in Kathmandu and Pokhara. It also has 600 Point of Sale (POS) machines. In keeping with its innovative nature and style, NIBL has also devised a ‘consortium of cards’ amongst some banks in Nepal. — HNS