By Modupe Gbadeyanka
QNB Group, the largest financial institution in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, announced its results for the six months ended 30 June 2017, which is the highest in the history of QNB Group.
For the first six months of 2017, Net Profit reached $1.8 billion, up by 7 percent compared to last year, demonstrating QNB Group’s success in resilience and maintaining strong growth while controlling costs.
Total assets reached $211 billion, up by 11 percent from June 2016, the highest ever achieved by the Group. This was driven by a growth rate of 11 percent in loans and advances to reach $152 billion.
QNB Group was successful in attracting new customer deposits. These deposit mobilisation efforts resulted in increased customer funding by 15 percent to reach $154 billion from June 2016. This led to the Group’s loan to deposit ratio reaching 98.3 percent, compared with 101.7 percent in June 2016. This clearly demonstrates the success of QNB’s strategy to diversify its funding sources.
The Group’s prudent cost control policy and strong revenue generating capability helped to improve the efficiency ratio (cost to income ratio) to 29.3 percent as at 30 June 2017, from 30.4 percent in June 2016, which is considered one of the best ratios among financial institutions in the region.
The Group was able to maintain the ratio of non-performing loans to gross loans at 1.8 percent, a level considered one of the lowest amongst financial institutional in the MEA region, reflecting the high quality of the Group’s loan book and the effective management of credit risk. The Group’s conservative policy in regard to provisioning continued with the coverage ratio reaching 110 percent in 30 June 2017.
QNB Group benefits from a highly diversified international and local funding base spread across MEA, Europe and Asia. QNB has successfully diversified its wholesale funding pools in terms of currencies, tenors and product mix and follows a very conservative approach to manage its liquidity needs.
Based on this, the Group decreased its Loans to Deposit ratio to 98.3 percent, from 101.7 percent in June 2016 and improved liquid assets which comprise of cash and cash equivalents to $18 billion or 8 percent of total assets.
Total Equity increased by 1 percent from June 2016 to reach $20 billion as at 30 June 2017. Earnings per share reached $1.91, compared to $1.85 in June 2016.
Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) calculated as per the QCB and Basel III requirements stood at 15.6 percent as at 30 June 2017, higher than the regulatory minimum requirements of the Qatar Central Bank and Basel Committee. The Group is keen to maintain a strong capitalisation in order to support future growth targets.
Based on the Group’s continuous strong performance and its diversified international presence, QNB is now the most valuable banking brand in the MEA region, with the value of its brand increased to $3.8 billion to rise to the 60th place globally, in addition to attaining the highest rating of AA+ in brand strength.
The total number of staff for the Group is more than 27,900 operating from 1,250 locations and 4,300 ATMs serving more than 21 million customers.
Adedapo Adesanya 
Dipo Olowookere