Van Groningen, Raiffeisen: We reversed the downward loan trend

After more than a year of constant declines, the loan portfolio of Raiffeisen Bank, a top ten bank on the market, resumed its growth, getting to over 2.7bn euros in late June, and the Austrians have ambitious plans to boost the lending market share.

“We’ve managed to halt the falling loan volumes. In recent months, we’ve come to grant new loans bigger than the sums paid back by clients for old loans and so we ended the downward trend that had lasted for over a year. With the profit level we have and with our risk management policy I would very much want to maintain this trend reversal and expand our lending market share,” Steven Van Groningen, Raiffeisen Bank chairman, told ZF.

In the first half, the bank generated net income worth almost 50m euros in line with IFRS, down only 5% from a year ago. Van Groningen says that profit in line with RAS stood at 45m euros, an almost similar level indicating the bank’s caution in setting up bad loan provisions.

As for the second half, Groningen says that are a lot of unknowns linked to the foreign environment, interest rate trends, political risk, tax changes. “(…) I’m afraid changes are not operated out of conviction, but under IMF and EU pressures”.