CTBC eyes South-east Asia for overseas growth

CTBC Bank - Taiwan's largest privately-owned lender - is steering its expansion strategy towards South-east Asia where it looks to capture a greater share of the growing intra-regional trade flows and finance domestic mid-market corporates, its vice-chairman Morris Li told The Business Times.

The bank is targeting to grow its net profit from overseas operations to 45 per cent of its overall bottom line by 2023, up from the current 40 per cent, as it pulls away from an overbanked Taiwan.

"Taiwan's banking sector is intensely competitive with mild loan growth of 4 per cent, average NIM (net interest margin) lower than 1.2 per cent and the deteriorating ROA (return on assets) which was only 0.7 per cent last year," said Mr Li.