Day: October 15, 2021

The Board of Directors of HBL has announced the financial results for the nine months period that ended on September 30, 2021.

HBL today declared a consolidated Profit after tax of Rs. 27.0 billion, up by 7% as compared to Rs. 25.27 billion recorded in the same period last year with earnings per share increasing to Rs. 18.21 compared to Rs. 17.17 in Q3 2020.

The Bank declared an Interim Cash Dividend for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, at Rs. 1.75/- per share, i.e., 17.5 percent. This is in addition to the Interim Cash Dividend already paid at Rs. 3.5/- per share, i.e., 35 percent.

According to the official statement, HBL has the industry’s largest balance sheet, which further increased to Rs. 4.1 trillion, in the nine months of 2021. This was achieved by continued strong growth in deposits, which increased by more than Rs. 330 billion (12 percent) during 2021 to Rs. 3.2 trillion; the Bank’s industry-leading current account book exceeded Rs. 1.1 trillion.

With HBL ready and willing to lend in support of economic growth, domestic advances continued to increase, rising by 9.0 percent over Dec’20 and surpassing Rs. 1.1 trillion. The bank’s flagship Consumer assets have continued their strong, well-managed growth and crossed Rs. 95 billion in the current quarter. With international franchises on a growth trajectory, HBL’s total advances increased by 12 percent over Dec’20, to Rs. 1.4 trillion.

HBL registered total revenue of Rs. 123 billion as the strong growth in fees and balance sheet volumes were able to offset the impact of industry-wide margin compression. The Bank recorded a net interest income of Rs. 97.2 billion, driven by an Rs. 400 billion growth in average balance sheet volumes. Fee income showed an impressive growth of 34 percent to Rs. 17.9 billion, driven by a stellar performance from the Cards and Consumer businesses and strong growth in domestic trade volumes, which surpassed the $10 billion mark for the first time.

Total expenses remained flat year on year despite the Bank’s continued investment in technology and digital initiatives and contributing to Pakistan’s economic growth and development. The Bank’s cost to income ratio (excluding capital gains), thus reduced from 60.9 percent in 9M’20 to 57.7 percent in 9M’21.

Commenting on the Bank’s performance, Muhammad Aurangzeb, President & CEO – HBL, said,

HBL maintained its robust performance across all business fronts and continued its strong business momentum in Q3 2021. The period saw significant gains, owing to the Bank’s strong core banking performance, transformative digitalization efforts, strategic partnerships, and groundbreaking interventions on financial inclusion and development finance initiatives.

The Bank remains a market leader in personal loans, merchant acquiring, credit cards, and debit cards. The throughput of both debit and credit cards was over Rs. 129 billion, up by 63 percent over the same period last year. The Bank’s merchant acquiring business has the largest Point of Sale network of 35,000 terminals in the country and recorded a growth of 50 percent by managing a throughput of Rs. 125 billion, which is the highest in the country.

The Bank’s SME and Rural Banking businesses have an advanced portfolio of Rs. 58 billion and Rs. 38 billion, respectively, which is a testament to the Bank’s commitment to serving the real sectors of the economy. SME trade volume recorded a YoY growth of 23 percent. Supporting the country’s agenda to promote exports, the export trade volume recorded year-on-year (YoY) growth of 28%.

HBL crossed Rs. 1 billion for disbursements in the Dairy financing business. HBL also became the first bank in the country to lend against an Electronic Warehouse Receipt, thereby enhancing the financial inclusion of the supply chain ecosystem.

HBL serves 6 million clients globally to make their payments through the Bank’s cutting-edge digital platforms. HBL Mobile and Internet Banking have maintained its leadership position, with a record milestone of more than 7 million transactions and throughput of Rs. 100 billion in a single month.

Konnect by HBL, the Bank’s branchless banking platform, continued its momentum, doubling transactions to 49 million and volumes reaching Rs. 707 billion in Q3 2021. A focused strategy led to a 41 percent increase in in-app registrations and a 32 percent increase in the overall account portfolio. Konnect has strengthened its digital product offering with the launch of ‘Gulak’ – a first of its kind digital saving product.

Financial inclusion is at the heart of HBL’s business philosophy, which manifested itself with the continuation of the Ehsaas Kafalat Program and the Punjab Agri Kissan Card mandate. Konnect by HBL has impacted 1.4 million farmers and digitally empowered 460,000 of them through the Kissan Cards.

HBL has been pursuing its client-centricity agenda aggressively across multiple client segments.

The Roshan Digital Account (RDA) portfolio maintained its growth momentum and has been ranked number 1 in accounts opened across the industry with a market share of 20 percent. HBL has brought in close to $330 million through the proposition.

HBL Prestige, a banking proposition for High-Net-Worth Individuals, expanded its footprint to 8 touchpoints in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. HBL Prestige has delivered positive results with 25 percent growth in the portfolio through an incremental deposit of Rs. 4.2 billion within 6 months of launch.

HBL Islamic Banking is operating over 250 dedicated branches, the 4th largest Islamic banking network in the country. Islamic Banking continues to focus on Commercial and SME businesses by expanding trade hubs to provide ease of service to these segments.

The HBL Development Finance team, through its pilot programs, has delivered enhanced yields for farmers. The Bank scaled up its Development Finance 2020 proof-of-concept interventions over 30 times through mid-scale pilots led by field-based, full-time agronomists who use handheld tablets to digitally onboard farmers onto HBL Pay. Pilot projects of over 3,200 acres (maize crop) were completed, and over 7,200 acres (rice crop) will be completed with the harvest in October, followed by the wheat and potatoes pilots in Q3 over 7,000 acres.

HBL Corporate, Commercial & Investment Banking Group closed a first of its kind Syndicated Transaction of Rs. 7.5 billion to develop a real estate project. Additionally, the Bank also closed the largest rights issue in the domestic corporate sector of Rs. 11.6 billion. The Bank continues to pursue infrastructure projects under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.

HBL’s presence in China has also played a significant role in enhancing trade flows as over 43 percent of CNY trade has been routed through HBL China, delivering on the strategy of developing trade corridors utilizing the Bank’s network presence.

Source: Pro Pakistani

The Federal Board of Revenue has collected income tax of Rs. 47.4 billion until now, while a total of 2.475 million income tax returns have been filed for the tax year 2021 so far.

Official sources told ProPakistani that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has collected Rs. 47.4 billion through 2.475 million income tax returns that were filed until 15 October.

According to the FBR’s data, the returns filed on the same date last year were 513,000, and the tax paid with the returns was Rs. 9.8 billion. The previous data that was released a few weeks ago showed that the FBR had already squeezed past its tax collection target for Q1 FY 2021-22, posting a growth of 38 percent year-over-year by collecting a total of Rs. 1,391 billion in taxes.

Yesterday, sources told ProPakistani that the FBR will earn an additional Rs. 27 billion from the withdrawal of concessionary sales tax rates on mobile phones under the government’s ongoing exercise of withdrawal of sales tax exemptions during 2021-22.

The government will also impose a 17 percent sales tax on cellular mobile phones in CKD/CBU form under the Ninth Schedule of the Sales Tax Act, 1990. All these taxation measures are part of the exercise to generate additional revenue of Rs. 330 billion from the withdrawal of exemptions during the current fiscal year.

The FBR has advised the nation to file their returns without delay as the deadline is 15 October. In order to facilitate taxpayers, it has enhanced the capacity of its IT System so that the IRIS software continues to work properly.

Source: Pro Pakistani

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has made it mandatory for the entities it regulates, including banks, microfinance banks, payment system operators, and payment system providers, to provide digital means of payments to their corporate clients to enable them to easily send and receive their payments.

Furthermore, in order to monitor the progress of implementation of these instructions, SBP has advised banks to submit their roadmaps for implementing these measures within 30 days. The banks are also required to submit quarterly progress reports to SBP, which would encompass the numbers of businesses they would facilitate for digitization of their payments and receipts.

According to details, SBP has asked its regulated entities to facilitate their institutional clients, including corporations, companies, and partnerships, for making large value payments through digital channels.

The regulated entities are now required to develop online portals/platforms for digital payments and receipts of corporates, including online interbank fund transfer services, online bill/invoice sharing and payment services like over the counter (OTC) digital payment services/facilities, card payments using Point of Sale (POS) terminals, QR codes, mobile devices, ATMs, Kiosks or any other devices or tools enabled to materialize digital payments.

SBP expects that these measures will increase documentation of value chains and help businesses more effectively manage their large value transactions. The initiative will also facilitate the implementation of measures recently introduced by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) about the integration of businesses with the FBR system and conducting of corporate payments through digital means.

The regulated entities are also required to make all efforts to take on board the non-corporate players, including sole proprietors, Small & Medium Enterprises and Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises for the provision of digital payments. This initiative follows other recent steps of SBP to promote digitization in Pakistan, including:

• Issuance of Customers’ Digital Onboarding Framework for opening of bank accounts digitally by resident Pakistanis

• Issuance of instructions for Enhancing Digitization Initiatives in Banks/MFBs with the vision to promote digitization in the banking sector and encourage the use of digital channels

• Provision of Repayment Facility to Bank Borrowers on Alternate Delivery Channels (ADCs)

• Streamlining Payment Card Security Regulations in order to bring convenience to the consumers with risk coverage that commensurate with the ever-evolving payment card markets and in line with international standards

• Launch of RAAST, Pakistan’s first Instant Payment System – an initiative by SBP

These steps are expected to result in increased convenience for the customers to fulfill their financial needs through safe, rapid, and secure digital infrastructure in Pakistan

Source: Pro Pakistani