KARACHI: The VIS Credit Rating Company Limited (VIS) has upgraded medium to long term entity rating of The Bank of Khyber (BOK) from ‘A’(Single A) to ‘A+’ (Single A Plus), while the short-term rating of ‘A-1’ remains stable.

According to the credit agency, the medium to long term rating of ‘A+’ is indicative of a lower anticipation of credit risk with adequate protection factors, which is not significantly susceptible of vulnerability to foreseeable events whereas the short term credit rating of A-1 denotes high certainty of timely payments, excellent liquidity factors supported by good fundamental protection factors.

This advancement of the Bank’s credit rating by the credit agency, VIS is the proof of the immense progress made by BOK in the past years, and it’s astonishing performance has been acknowledged by its stakeholders including external monitoring agencies.

These enhanced credit ratings are drawn from various upgrades during the past year such as the Bank wide implementation of Temenos T-24 core banking system, increase in the advances portfolio, and notable improvement in profitability led by higher net markup income and increased sale of government securities strengthened by the new T-24 core banking system, BOK plans to expand its branch network in order to further grow its lending portfolio. In light of the COVID-19 relief program by State Bank of Pakistan, BOK rescheduled/restructured almost 10 percent of its advances portfolio. BOK recorded a notable increase in profits in FY20 despite of substantial prudent provisioning for high risk loans.

Ihsan Ullah Ihsan Managing Director, the Bank of Khyber commented on the occasion that “The bank’s performance took a long period of time to flourish, backed by rigorous efforts of its employees, our management is even more dedicated towards further enhancing the profitability and establishing an ever improving image of the bank in the industry.”—PR

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021