AFFIN Bank (AHBMK)
Malaysia / Banking
Active
Issuer Summary
AFFIN Bank Berhad is a Malaysian mid-tier banking group with conventional banking, Islamic banking, investment banking, and treasury operations. The improvement in FY2025 profitability and asset quality, together with capital and liquidity headroom, is positive. On the other hand, the bank does not have as deep a franchise as the leading banks, and the decline in the CASA ratio makes it harder to assess funding quality and earnings sustainability. The direction is positive but cautious, and AFFIN should be viewed not as “already a strong bank,” but as “a bank that is becoming stronger.” Investors should monitor the CASA ratio, deposit mix, growth quality in Enterprise Banking, credit costs, capital ratios, and the repeatability of the FY2025 improvement.
AFFIN Bank Berhad’s credit can be summarized as that of “a Malaysian mid-tier bank where profitability and asset quality are improving at the same time, but whose franchise depth still lags the leading banks.” As of May 4, 2026, the latest public financial information that can be clearly confirmed on AFFIN’s IR website is its FY2025 results, announced on February 26, 2026. The current investment view should therefore be built primarily around FY2025. FY2025 was, overall, a set of results that confirmed improvement, with profit before tax reaching a record RM755.7m, loans and deposits both expanding, and the impaired loan ratio declining.
The first credit impression is that AFFIN is at least not currently a bank with a stressed balance sheet. Loans and financing expanded to RM79.5bn, customer deposits to RM80.2bn, and total assets to RM124.1bn. On capital, the group reported a CET1 ratio of 13.4%, Tier 1 ratio of 14.8%, and total capital ratio of 17.3%; on liquidity, its LCR was 162.4%. All of these are comfortably above regulatory minimum levels. In addition, the gross impaired loan ratio improved from 1.94% at end-FY2024 to 1.64% at end-FY2025, suggesting that the improvement is not merely balance-sheet expansion, but expansion accompanied by better quality. Looking only at these financial contours, the bank’s basic credit profile is well within investment-grade territory.
At the same time, the reservations against overvaluing AFFIN are also clear. The largest issue is the quality of its deposit funding structure, namely the decline in the CASA ratio. In FY2025, customer deposits themselves increased, but the CASA ratio fell from 30.4% in FY2024 to 25.0% in FY2025. This suggests that although the bank has been able to secure funding volume, the quality of funding may have deteriorated. Credit investors should take this seriously because a weaker deposit mix can lead to future NIM pressure, greater vulnerability to price competition, and lower funding stickiness in stress periods. AFFIN’s current strength is not based on a lack of capital or liquidity pressure, but on improving operating indicators. Whether that improvement can be converted into long-term franchise strengthening ultimately depends on the funding structure, including CASA.
Issuer Reports
Current public reports for this issuer.