Banco do Brasil is much better placed to weather the economic storm caused by the global coronavirus pandemic than it was during the Brazilian recession of 2016, according to the bank’s CFO, Carlos Hamilton Vasconcelos Araújo.
He tells Euromoney that he expects the bank to be less negatively affected than Brazil’s large private-sector banks.
“Our credit portfolio is more defensive than the banking industry average,” he says. “When compared to the system, we don’t expect the same impact in our portfolio.”
Hamilton says that it is still “too early to say how much NPLs [non-performing loans] could increase”, but he points out that Banco do Brasil has low corporate exposure to the worst hit industry sectors. Lending to airlines and tourism companies is 0.5% and 0.04% of the total respectively.
The bank has also been skewing its corporate book towards quality agribusiness credits in recent years – and that is a sector that is expected to emerge relatively unscathed once the threat from Covid-19 recedes.
Carlos Hamilton Vasconcelos Araújo, Banco do Brasil |
“We have been closely monitoring the situation of the companies and we are ready to help in any way necessary,” says Hamilton.
