Bandung (Admin). InfoBank Magazine has published the results of its research on the 200 best banks in Southeast Asia in October 2007.
The research conducted by Infobank's reseach team has ranked SMBCI at the 111th position out of the 200 best banks across Southeast Asia region.
The top five positions were still held by the banks of Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. The United Overseas Bank Ltd.-UOB Singapore was ranked first, followed by Singapore's DBS Bank and Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation Ltd.-OCBC. Ranked fourth was Malaysian Banking Berhad-Maybank, followed by Bangkok Bank Public Company, Ltd. on the fifth rank.
This ranking indicates that Indonesian banking sector is able to generate high NIM (Net Interest Margin), despite the inefficient operations. Indonesian banks were ranked first in terms of efficiency as reflected by the ratio of operating expenses to operating income.
Among the nine countries excluding Laos, Indonesian banks generated the ratio of operating expenses to operating income of 73.90%. Meanwhile, the banks in other countries have higher efficiency, such as Singapore (45.14%), Malaysia (49.62%), Vietnam (49.17%), Cambodia (52.60%) and Thailand (66.38%).
Closer to Indonesia's score was the Philippines with the score of 71.72%.
That means, the first step that need to be taken by Indonesian banks is reducing inefficiency, because it would be difficult to rely on net interest income, as interest rates have been to high, unless lending increases. (FDT, source: Infobank October 2007)
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