Saudi bank performance ‘much better’ than peers in other countries, says official

Saudi banks’ performance is“much better” than peers in other countries, backed by their solid financial soundness indicators, FahadAl-Shathri, Deputy Governorfor Supervision at the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA), told CNBC Arabia.

An increase was expected in non-performing loans (NPLs), due to the coronavirus impact, but the impact was lower than expected.

Moreover, SAMA’s initiatives have largely contributed to mitigating the coronavirus pandemic impact on the private and financial sectors.

Al-Shathri added that the number of contracts that benefited from deferred payments reached 87,000 with SAR 79 billion worth of payments last week. A total of 2,700 contracts also received more than SAR 2.5 billion loans under the loan guarantee program (Kafalah).

SAMA provided over 6,700 “Kafaalat”, and incurred over SAR 525 million fees of point-of-sale (POS) and e-commerce transactions and SAR 160 million fees of the Kafaalat.

The Saudi central bank is open to new conventional or digital banks, Al-Shathrinoted, concluding that several applications have been received from banks and are under study by SAMA.