Banking and financial services

The UN urged government and financial organisations to stimulate Cambodia’s flailing micro-insurance industry yesterday, after a study found the country’s poor are vulnerable to indebtedness during a crisis. The United Nations Development Business (UNDB) hosted a working group yesterday at Phnom Penh’s Sunway Hotel launching the ...

The wages of 400,000 civil servants from 39 government ministries are to be paid via a new electronic banking system due to be rolled out next month. Secretary of State for the Ministry of Economy and Finance Chu Kim Leng announced the new payroll system on ...

The Shanghai Commercial & Saving Bank (SCSB), one of the leading banks in China’s Taiwanese region, opened a representative office here on Monday thanks to increasing interest in Cambodia by Taiwanese business people, a bank official said. To date, Cambodia has six foreign banks’ representative ...

Chea Serey, the daughter of National Bank Governor Chea Chanto, has been promoted to director-general of the central bank, she confirmed this week. Ms. Serey will replace Nguon Sokha, who said that she left the National Bank about a month ago after being appointed as a ...

Cambodia’s finance sector should increase insurance accessibility to its smallest lenders to help protect against indebtedness at times of disaster, an industry expert said at a conference in Phnom Penh yesterday. Speaking at the Hotel Cambodiana to an audience of industry representatives on rural entrepreneurship, Jaime ...

Cambodia’s banking sector has seen 17 percent rise in lending in the first nine months of the year, the central bank’s figures showed Thursday. The kingdom’s 34 commercial banks had provided a total loan of 6.89 billion U.S. dollars to customers by the end of September ...

Environmental campaign group Global Witness on Thursday called on the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Deutsche Bank to divest immediately from a Vietnamese firm whose rubber plantations in Cambodia are accused of rampant illegal logging and forced evictions of indigenous communities. The call came exactly six ...

Orix, a Japanese financial conglomerate, will acquire about $11 million shares in Acleda Bank PLC, Cambodia’s largest bank, by the year’s end, officials announced Wednesday, although industry executives said the investment appears only exploratory and likely won’t make more than a ripple in the banking ...

ACLEDA officially launched its first credit card on Friday as Cambodia’s largest bank eyes the country’s rising middle income bracket, president and CEO In Channy said yesterday. “This is the right time for us to start this Visa credit card product. By 2020, Cambodia will change ...

Only 3.7 percent of Cambodia’s 14 million people have bank accounts with a financial institution, while less than 1 percent of those with an account are actually using them to save money, according to a World Bank report released Tuesday. Though the World Bank’s Global Financial ...

Malaysian financial services group Hwang-DBS Bhd is selling its eponymous bank in Cambodia for $40 million, the company has announced on the Bursa Malaysia. The sale is to Phillip MFIs Pte Ltd, a member of the Singapore-based PhillipCapital Group. PhillipCapital has an existing presence in ...

Orix Corp., Japan’s top leasing company, has agreed to buy a 6% stake in Cambodia’s largest bank by assets, Acleda Bank PLC, according to people close to the matter. It would be the first investment by a major Japanese financial institution in the Southeast Asian country, ...

Two of the leading microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Cambodia said yesterday that they have identified a relatively small fraction of borrowers who were affected by flooding and would provide relief on their repayment schedules if necessary. The comments come after both Prime Minister Hun Sen and ...

More than $600 million flooded out of Cambodia’s entire banking system during the third quarter of this year, as fears of post-election chaos set off panic and mass withdrawals, new figures from the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) reveal. The figures, obtained yesterday, were the first ...

The opposition party has called on microfinance institutions to renegotiate payment terms with flood-affected loan holders. This year’s floods have affected 20 provinces and more than 1.7 million people, with 31,314 households evacuated, according to the Humanitarian Response Forum. The Cambodia National Rescue Party has asked that ...

Chief Cambodia Specialized Bank, a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based brokerage firm, will begin operations in Cambodia next month, its management said on Monday. Sokun Chakriya, head of marketing and sales at Chief Cambodia, said the bank aims to increase access to finance in Cambodia’s agricultural ...

Civil servants living in Phnom Penh will have wages paid into Canadia Bank accounts starting this week, Moth Kiev, secretary of the Ministry of Social Affairs, said on Friday. The children of retired and disabled civil servants who have died will receive payments directly from ...

SET-listed Group Lease Plc (GL) plans to acquire a microfinance company in Cambodia as part of its effort to boost overseas revenue to more than 50% by 2015. GL’s chief executive Mitsuji Konoshita said negotiations are nearly finalised and the acquisition will be made through ...

Cambodia’s 35 microfinance institutions had lent $1.18 billion to their customers by the end of September this year, a 33 percent rise from $890 million at the end of last year, a report of the Cambodia Microfinance Association (CMA) said Friday. On the deposit side, the ...

Maybank Cambodia Plc, with 12 branches in the Indo-Chinese country, is optimistic over Cambodia’s medium-to-long-term prospects with its four additional branches opened today, bringing its total network there to 16 branches. With the opening of the branches, the bank expects them to boost its total deposits ...

National insurance broking firm MGA Insurance Brokers is opening a new office in the developing market of Cambodia. The Cambodian operation was being set up as a joint venture with two local brokers, Chantol Seng and Sophat Meas, who had extensive international experience. “Cambodia has a ...

Bangkok Bank has urged Thai businesses to have a more active role in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) in terms of trading activities and investment, in order to tap the growing middle-class market in those countries. Speaking at the bank’s “Trade Logistics in Greater Mekong Sub-region: ...

The four people charged with embezzling more than $2 million from Canadia Bank PLC were able to do so by creating fictitious bank accounts and using fraudulent credit cards to withdraw money from those accounts, the bank’s CEO said Monday, the first time Canadia has ...

With pant legs rolled up to his knees, Hoeuy Mon trudges through a brown and green patchwork of rice fields. His four hectares are in Tkov village, Prey Veng province, about 300 metres from his home. On most of the journey, walkways enclosing each square plot ...