Good income levels, but limited costs are the basis of the record profits of BORICA – BANKSERVICE JSC. For the first half of the year the company has achieved 70.8% of the planned profit for the year and profit growth compared to the first half of last year was 8.9%. Eyeing an overall profit of 8.578 million levs at year-end what is has collected for the first half of the year came to 6.072 million levs.
„This record high achievement, however, will be corrected in the second half,“ said Executive Director Lubomir Tsekov. This is because, according to the tradition, the investment programme of the company is concentrated mainly in the period from July to December – when it will have installed much of the new equipment and when it also begins calculating the depreciation for it, he explained. Furthermore, much of the advertising will be broadcast in the autumn – which is the period when the firm has scheduled meetings and seminars for clients and major international forums oprganised by BORICA – BANKSERVICE. One of the main events of the year will be the meeting of the European Association of Clearing Houses, which consists of 25 organizations. The working title of the forum is „Payment services provided by non-bank financial institutions.“ So far there are more than 100 participants from 24 countries. Among the invited are global giants such as Pay Pal, Amazon, Google.
BORICA – BANKSERVICE AD completed the first half of the year with its plan for revenue fulfilled at 52.5%, but there is a decline of 0.9% compared to the first six months of last year. Lubomir Tsekov explained that last year there was a one-time revenue that this year will not be incurred. „In the first half of 2013 we completed the project for electronic identification of procurement procedures for the Ministry of Transport and Communications coming to around 1 million. If we eliminate this factor of this „accidental“ project in the revenues for the first half of this year, the figure has actually increased over the last year by about 7.9%,“ he explained.
More revenue was generated by all payment systems – BISERA 6, BISERA 7 and BORICA, data from the report showed. The largest growth is in BISERA 7 – 3% over the plan and 20.7% up compared to the corresponding period last year. The record growth was caused by a sharp increase in the number of transfers to the country and abroad, said Tsekov. In a period of tight lending many banks opted for such transfers, which brought good revenue to a number of them, he said. The ratio of external to internal system transactions changed in favour of external ones and the transactions carried out outside BISERA 7 in euros rose by 2% compared to 2013, reaching 80% of the transactions of the banks participating in the system. As of 30 June 2014, their number is 81,896. The growth of transactions in the system compared to the same period of 2013 was 38.1%. Revenues from BISERA 7 in euros amounted to 37,000 levs, or 52.9% of those planned for 2014. The increase compared to the corresponding period in 2013 is 20.7%.
Revenues from BISERA 6 amounted to 2.9 million levs and the plan was performed at 50.7%. Compared to the same period of 2013, revenues increased by 10.9%, against a target of a 7.0-perecent rise. The reason for the growth in transactions over the planned was the reintroduction of the practice from March 2014 for four accounts for paying taxes and social security contributions. As a result there is an increasing number of transactions to the state budget over the projected ones. As a result, the number of transactions in BISERA 6 grew by 12.4% against a planned growth of 8% and the number of budget payments increased by 17.0% while the number of non-budget increased by 9.4%.
Revenues from the BORICA system amounted to 7.1 million levs and the growth compared to the same period of 2013 was 10.4% (against a target of 10.0%). Implementation of the plan in this segment stood at 50.8% at mid-year. At end-June 2014 the number of ATM transactions with local cards issued by BORICA increased by 3.3% over the same period in 2013. Payments on POS terminals for the same period increased by 13.0% compared to the first half of 2013. During the first half of 2014 the average value of ATM withdrawals was 158 levs (against 149 levs in 2013), and the average value of the transaction at POS terminals was 74 levs (against 75 levs in 2013).
The total number of ATM devices connected to the system of BORICA at the end of June 2014 was 2,969. During the reporting period 80 new ATMs were installed, and 67 ATMs were brought out of service.
The additional services offered by the company, whose shareholders are the banks in the country, significantly contribute to the revenue growth. SEBRA system has shown an increase of 6.9%; in certification services (electronic signature) the growth was 1.8%, while the electronic invoicing segment (eFaktura) generated a rise of 9.2%.
The BANKER
