Plunges 25.4% from 2019
The Financial Supervisory Service announced on April 15 that South Korean banks’ overseas net profits reached US$733 million in 2020, a drop of 25.4 percent from US$983 million in 2019.
Last year, they posted a combined net profit of US$164 million in Cambodia, US$149 million in Vietnam, US$120 million in Hong Kong and US$100 million in China. The profit decreased in every country except for Cambodia. For example, it dropped 63.3 percent, 51.7 percent and 50.6 percent in Indonesia, the United Kingdom and India, respectively.
The banks increased the number of their overseas branches only by two in 2020. Specifically, they had 197 branches in 37 countries at the end of 2020, when nine new branches were opened and seven existing ones were closed.
The net assets of the branches, however, increased 23.4 percent to US$165.01 billion last year. This was led by those in Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore, whose assets increased 46.1 percent. Those in the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom increased theirs by 37.1 percent, 19.2 percent and 16.3 percent, respectively.
Still, the asset soundness of the branches fell in 2020. For instance, their non-performing loan ratio, that is, the ratio of loans overdue by more than three months, jumped from 0.63 percent to 2.14 percent.