KUALA LUMPUR, May 26 — Malaysia Building Society Bhd (MBSB) posted a lower net profit of RM58.21 million in the first quarter ended March 31, 2022 (Q1 FY2022) from RM63.41 million a year ago due to a decline in non-funded income and higher operating expenditure in technology and personnel-related expenses.

Revenue slipped to RM664.55 million compared with RM680.98 million a year ago, also due to lower non-funded income following losses incurred in the sale of Treasury investments.

MBSB said its impairment charge dropped by RM16.70 million, or 9.5 per cent on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, while modification losses of RM8.96 million were incurred in Q1 FY2022 under the Urus (Financial Management and Resilience) programme.

The group also recorded a higher gross impaired ratio of 5.89 per cent versus 4.60 per cent in the preceding quarter, mainly arising from the expiry of the repayment assistance and impairment of several corporate financing facilities.

"We expect gross impaired financing to normalize in subsequent quarters with efforts underway to restructure and recover the financing,” acting chief executive officer Datuk Nor Azam M. Taib said in a statement today.

He said the reopening of the economy augurs well for the country, hence MBSB expects improved confidence from both consumers and businesses, which will contribute positively to the overall activity of the Malaysian economy.

Nor Azam said that although gross financing only grew by 0.7 per cent during Q1 FY2022, MBSB is set to see higher growth in the coming quarters as some of these financing facilities are at various stages of disbursements.

He added that the bank would also see some margin compression resulting from the recent hike in the Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) by 25 basis points to 2.00 per cent but MBSB is confident about addressing this by managing its funding costs.

Its deposits increased by 1.8 per cent to register at RM33.85 billion from RM33.25 billion in Q4 FY2021, contributed by the current and savings account (CASA-i) segment.

Its main subsidiary, MBSB Bank, recently launched a digital customer identity verification solution, aimed at increasing customer convenience and improving the bank’s efficiency; this will integrate with the existing CASA-i account opening platform, to be followed by Personal Financing-i and e-Wallet.

MBSB said the system will perform document verification, facial recognition, bureau-file verification and knowledge-based verification to deter fraudulent transactions, cross-checking against an independent data source and real-time data extraction.

MBSB Bank also recently launched its virtual branch enabling customers to perform various digital on-demand banking services using their online and mobile devices. — Bernama