Monday, March 16, 2009

Kist upgraded as a 26th commercial bank

The central bank has awarded Kist Merchant Banking and Finance Company -- a C-Class finance company -- an A-class commercial bank's licence, making it the 26th commercial bank.
Nepal Rastra Bank's (NRB) board meeting today awarded the licence of a commercial bank to the finance company. It is the second finance company to be upgraded to a commercial bank after NMB bank, the 25th commercial bank.
Currently, there are 173 licenced deposit-taking institutions and at least two dozen financial institutions including five A-class commercial banks are in the pipeline.
The wonder of it is that a small economy like Nepal is sustaining so many financial institutions. However, the financial institutions are blamed for being urban-centric leading to a situation where over 70 per cent of populace not getting access to banking services.
The proposed People's Bank Nepal Ltd, Mero Bank Ltd and Century Commercial Bank are also in the process of getting licences from the central bank apart from another C-class finance company -- Nepal Share Market. In the event of these four getting their licences, the country will have 30 commercial banks.

Kist in numbers (Rs in '000)
1 Authorized Capital Rs 5,000,000
2 Paid Up Capital Rs 2,000,000
3 Deposit Rs 5,014,210
4 Lending & Investment Rs 5,244,758
5 Net Profit (Poush end 65) Rs 16,850
6 Net worth Rs 2,043,173
7 P/E Ratio 477 times
8 No of Branches 19 (in number)
9 Customer Base 60,000 (in number)
10 No of Employees 223 (in number)

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