Dunia Group records Dh251m profit in 2015

Dubai - The group's subsidiaries Dunia Finance reported a net profit of Dh217.4 million and Dunia Services earned Dh33.5 million net profit

 Dunia Group on Tuesday announced its financial results and declared a net profit of Dh250.9 million for 2015. The group's subsidiaries Dunia Finance reported a net profit of Dh217.4 million and Dunia Services earned Dh33.5 million net profit, the company said in a statement.
It said despite the challenging global economic environment, dunia delivered operating income of Dh723.2 million in 2015, up 43 per cent on 2014, and net profit of Dh217.4 million, an increase of 14 per cent over the prior year.
This performance was driven by dunia's customer centric strategy of deepening relationships through superior service, customised solutions, and intelligent use of technology, enhanced platforms, highly trained staff and careful expense control. The increase in net profit to Dh217.4 million allowed dunia to achieve a record 32.2 per cent return on equity for the period.
Customer expansion was a key feature of the year, with a 28 per cent increase in total customers, taking dunia beyond 200,000 customers for the first time, reaching 211,000 by the end of the period. As a result, customer assets surpassed Dh2billion, up 34 per cent on FY14, and customer deposit balances increased 42 per cent to Dh1.2 billion compared to Dh828.7 million in FY14. Dunia's balance sheet remained robust, with cash and deposits with banks growing to Dh131.3 million, reflecting dunia's prudent liquidity management.
Careful process control and a strategic focus on risk management underpinned dunia's performance, enabling the company to be a low-cost provider; contributing to the positive operating leverage of 18 per cent recorded in the year. Dunia's cost-income ratio shows a healthy improvement, reducing to 28 per cent from 32 per cent in the prior year, reflecting greater efficiency across its operations. Dunia's prudent provisioning policy is reflected in a Non-Performing Loan, or NPL, coverage of 1.2x and an increase in impairment reserves from Dh43.4 million in 2014 to Dh68.9 million in 2015. As of December 31, 2015, dunia had a 33.1 per cent capital adequacy level, significantly higher than the regulatory required 15 per cent capital adequacy ratio, underlining the company's focus on sound risk management principles and overall standards of governance.
Salem Rashid Al Noaimi, chairman of dunia, said: "Despite headwinds in the global economy, dunia has delivered another strong financial performance. There were several drivers behind this impressive growth, but a commitment to innovation, significant customer expansion, and a deepening of relationships remained the most important factors. Our customer centric approach has proved to be both successful and sustainable so we are confident of generating even greater shareholder value going forward."
Rajeev Kakar, managing director and CEO, Dunia Group said: "This was another year of excellent growth for dunia. We continued to develop flexible and convenient products for customers, while enhancing our efficiency. Underpinning our growth strategy was a strong focus on investing in digitisation through the use of new-age technologies and advanced tools for customer acquisition and engagement across various platforms - Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud Computing solutions. Our enhanced capabilities of understanding and predicting customer's current behaviour, future behaviour have enabled us to offer a unique and seamless service experience to our customers."
- abdulbasit@khaleejtimes.com