Financial Times

Impressive turnaround by DFCC Vardhana

In an impressive turnaround, DFCC Vardhana Bank (DVB), turned a net loss of Rs 23.98 million in 2004 into a Rs 79.2 million net profit in 2005, becoming the fastest growing commercial bank of Sri Lanka. It reached this growth level by just 20 percent of the client base.

“A trade finance package has been signed and it will be introduced in about three months from July,” said L. G. Perera, Managing Director and CEO of DVB, speaking of the bank’s future plans.

Last year the number of Letter of Credits (LC), opened by import customers through DFCC amounted to 1,315 while other import bills handled were 1,972 as opposed to the 752 LC’s and import bills the previous year.

“Due to the popularity in this sector there are also plans to fully automate the LC transactions through which we hope to offer better and more efficient service,” Mr. Perera said.

The recently released DVB annual report, recorded Rs 118.5 million as profits prior to taxation, while DVB’s net interest income also grew by 114 percent to Rs 234 million in 2005, up from Rs 97.3 million the year before.

Perera also added that DVB plans to launch retail banking by next year, plans to expand its branch network, increasing the bank’s ATM accessibility and improving its IT platform are also underway.

Shareholder funds of Rs 325.4 million in 2004 rose to Rs 904.6 million (178 percent) in 2005. The momentum continued with this year’s first quarter results as Rs. 40 million, almost tripling the Rs15 million record of the corresponding quarter of 2005.

Back to Business