Banking and financial services
Major banks
Local MFI relaunched after South Korean buyout
Cambodia’s booming microfinance sector continues to attract international investors, with a South Korean financial institution the latest to buy out one of the Kingdom’s myriad microlenders. The Seoul-based Welcome Financial Group announced on November 4 that it had acquired the full shareholding of Green Central ...
Bancassurance has room to grow
The bancassurance model, while still relatively undeveloped in Cambodia, has huge potential to drive the growth of the insurance sector, financial industry specialists said during a conference in Phnom Penh on November 2. Robert Elliott, CEO of Manulife, said during a panel discussion that rising ...
ANZ to remain in local market?
The chief executive of ANZ Royal Bank has denied media reports that the Australian and New Zealand Bank Group is considering pulling the plug on its Cambodian operations amid a planned retreat from the region’s markets. In a filing to the Australian Stock Exchange on ...
TrueMoney goes international, targeting Myanmar
Local mobile payment companies are gearing up to extend their payment services overseas after the Bank of Thailand eased foreign exchange rules. The central bank in March eased the regulations to allow companies that hold payment licences under the law regulating e-payment to act as ...
Central bank to allow fintech experimentation
The bank of Thailand will open the way for financial-technology product experimentation under its regulatory “sandbox” in the first quarter of next year, in the hope that fintech developers applying to participate can receive licences quickly once they decide to commercialise their products or services. ...
IMF reminds Indonesia to balance financial deepening and stability
Financial development in Indonesia has evolved at a relatively slow speed in comparison to peer countries. Although this provides opportunities for financial deepening, the International Monetary Fund has been quick to remind Indonesia that deepening should be balanced with stability to avoid a crisis. “There is ...
Banking with a positive spin
A banking sector initiative launched on September 19 aims to advise Cambodia’s financial sector on best practices for sustainable lending while capitalising on the growing pool of international funds that could flow into green and socially responsible projects. The Sustainable Finance Initiative will conduct two years of ...
PM weighs in on rice lending
Rice millers said on September 18 they welcomed the prime minister’s announcement that the government would make over $20 million in funds available shortly to support cash-strapped millers and prop up falling paddy prices.“We’ve been waiting for these loans for a long time like fish waiting ...
No sign of relief for rice industry
As the harvest season of Cambodia’s most important crop kicks off, a crisis is looming as both rice farmers and millers face crippling capital shortages and a promised industry lifeline has yet to materialise. Industry experts said on September 14 that these small farmers desperate to pay ...
Lenders come out of the dark
More than a year into a government-backed campaign to clamp down on unlicensed lenders, nearly 130 small lenders operating under the radar have come into the fold, officials said on September 8. The Ministry of Economy and Finance and the National Bank of Cambodia launched a ...
