Page 5 - bne IntelliNews George country report Sept 2017

1.1 TBC Bank eyeing digital expansion
TBC Bank may have made waves last year with its acquisition of Bank Republic, making it the largest bank in Georgia overnight, but its goals nowadays are of a more virtual, rather than physical, nature.
"Digitisation and improving customer experience are tactical priorities for us, and our target going forward is to become the best digital financial services company in the region," TBC Bank's CEO, Vakhtang Butskhrikidze, told bne IntelliNews in an interview at the end of August.
In order to achieve its goal, Butskhrikidze explains, the bank has rounded off its offering to include brokerage and investment banking services to existing clients, but has also invested heavily in multi-channel banking. "We just launched the first Georgian-language chatbot, which can inform our customers about exchange rates, the location of ATMs and branches and allows them to conduct peer-to-peer transactions," he explains.
Meanwhile, an improved mobile banking application has resulted in more transactions taking place via this platform than via Internet banking or physical branches in the first half-year. The application is wildly popular among customers - it has a rating of 4.9 on Google PlayStore, which is rare not just in Georgia, but for banks anywhere, Butskhrikidze says.
High profitability
In its recently released half-year financial results , TBC Bank reported a 27.6% y/y increase in net profit to GEL176.4mn ( €62.2mn), a 36.4% y/y increase in operating income to GEL410.6mn, a decrease in the return on assets from 4.2% in H1/2016 to 3.3% this year and a decrease in return on equity from 22.5% to 21.5% y/y.
The results for the merged entity with Bank Republic, which used to be the fourth largest lender in the country and which TBC Bank purchased from France's Societe Generale last October in a GEL315mn (€110mn) deal, has even better results.
The acquisition, which was completed in May, has seen the newly integrated bank increase its asset base by 66.6 y/y to GEL11.2bn, its gross loans by 56.8% y/y and its deposits by 56.1% to GEL6.1bn. So much so, that the bank now commands a 38% market share of gross loans and almost 40% market share of total deposits in Georgia, meaning that it overtook the previous incumbent, Bank of Georgia, to become the country's largest bank.
Retail customers have always been at the heart of the bank's operations, and now account for 50.1% of its loans and 55.6% of its deposits. Improving service to customers - and increasing sales to existing customers - is key to TBC Bank's performance looking
5 GEORGIA Country Report September 2017 www.intellinews.com