Saudi British Bank (SABB) net profits increased 52% to SAR4.872 billion ($1.298 billion) during the fiscal year 2022 and total operating income increased 26% to SAR9.697 billion for the year, said a statement. 

 

Announcing the results for FY2022, Lubna S Olayan, Chair of the Board of Directors of SABB, commented: “SABB continues to deliver on the promise of the merger, with growth across all businesses, improving digitisation and customer experience as a result of our strategic investment plans, and increased investment in our people who remain our core asset. One hundred percent of our senior management team reporting to the CEO are homegrown, local Saudi talent and over a third of our senior management is female. We continue to be a nurturing environment for talent across the entire employee base – something we are extremely proud of.”

 

On SABB’s financial performance, Olayan noted: “Our financial performance was ahead of plans, and mirrored the strong and resilient performance by the Kingdom and the Saudi economy against a global backdrop of increased uncertainty and geopolitical tensions. Benchmark rates have increased at pace as global economies tackle inflation. Given the construct of our balance sheet with a large proportion that re-prices with 3-month SAIBOR, our revenues have increased significantly, and at the same time we have continued to invest whilst maintaining positive operating efficiency. Throughout the year, asset quality has remained stable. We grew our customer lending portfolio by 9%, revenue by 26%, and profits by 52%, while our return on tangible equity grew 3.7ppts to 11.5%.” 

 

Customer lending has been a strategic focus, with SAR7.908 billion or 6% growth in the corporate business accompanied by SAR5.785 billion or 14% growth in the retail business. 

 

Olayan commented:“Within our corporate business, we continue to participate in the Vision 2030 giga projects and all the way down the value chain and, more recently, have focused our energies on investing and improving our MSME business. Equally, our retail business has performed extremely well with mortgage originations growing at faster than the market rate.”

 

SABB’s performance during 2022 has also received external recognition through being awarded Saudi Arabia’s Best Bank 2022 by Global Finance Magazine. 

 

The 2022 net customer advances of SAR183.132 billion were higher than the SAR167.556 billion recorded in 2021, up 9%; customer deposits of SAR214.279 billion were higher 15% than the SAR186.761 billion recorded in 2021. – TradeArabia News Service