Mongolia
LATEST ARTICLES
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Golomt Bank takes the best domestic bank award for Mongolia this year in recognition of its financial performance and efforts to improve sustainability and diversity.
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Mongolia’s best bank for corporates this year is Golomt Bank, which has enhanced its products and services to support the changing needs of domestic corporates.
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Golomt Bank distinguished itself during the awards period as a leader in corporate social responsibility demonstrating commitment to Mongolia's social and economic development and cultural heritage.
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Khan Bank, the largest commercial bank in Mongolia, has been named best bank for environmental, social and governance in the country this year in recognition of its work to develop green financial products and services and to support sustainability.
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Trade and Development Bank (TDBM) takes the diversity and inclusion award in Mongolia this year thanks to its clear strategy to improve gender equality within and outside the bank.
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High mobile phone penetration in Mongolia has driven domestic banks to ramp up their digital transformation efforts. Khan Bank was the first in Mongolia to introduce internet banking in 2007. Its mobile application was launched in 2013, and in 2022, users of its digital platform totalled 1.7 million (close to 50% of the population), with the ratio of transactions made through digital channels over conventional reaching 99%.
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Khan Bank is Mongolia's best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises after having grown its business and commitment to the segment.
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Mongolia’s five big lenders have successfully completed their IPOs, doubling the size of the local stock market. But the challenge of attracting more foreign institutional investment remains.
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Being stuck between Russia and China has never put more pressure on Mongolia than in the past year. But the authorities and banks are making the best of a near-impossible situation – and succeeding in the process.
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Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia is considered a pioneer in the resources-rich country. Its momentum on sustainability has gained more steam over the years.
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Excelling at diversity is about much more than naming a couple of women to top jobs.
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Creating a version of Silicon Valley in Mongolia has always been the driving force behind LendMN, founded by Anar Chinbaatar, Boldbaatar Ochirsuren, Otgonbayar Uuye and Otgonbayar Purevsuren.
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Khan Bank’s chief executive, Munkhtuya Rentsenbat, landed the top job at an unusually challenging time: it was December 2020, when the economic cracks due to Covid-19 were appearing and shaking world markets.
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In the past year, Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia consolidated its leading position as the universal banking service provider of choice for corporations.
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In the past year, Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia consolidated its leading position as the universal banking service provider of choice for corporations.
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No one does corporate social responsibility in the country on the scale of Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia, which pairs its CSR operations with its increasing commitment to sustainability in the local market.
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When Norihiko Kato took the helm of Golomt Bank in 2019, he had little idea of the global chaos to come. The Covid-19 pandemic greatly complicated plans to expand the bank’s business in the retail, corporate and small and medium-sized enterprise sectors. But Golomt succeeded anyway.
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The merger of Credit Bank with TransBank offers a template for Mongolia’s financial industry, which is ripe for more consolidation and better governance.
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The community of economies going green in a hurry has the unlikeliest of new members: coal-addicted Mongolia. Can the country shed its past?
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Anar Chinbaatar, one of five founders of LendMN, doesn’t claim to be able to see into the future. But it’s hard to think of an entrepreneur who did a better job of gearing a startup for where Mongolia would be six years on.
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Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia didn’t miss a step in 2020, its 30th anniversary year, when it strengthened its status as the nation’s best corporate and investment bank.
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With Khan Bank, the hard part is figuring out which of Asiamoney’s five awards for Mongolia it deserves most, given it checks pretty much all of the boxes.
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TransBank set a new standard for multi-tasking in 2021 as it pulled off a merger during an economy-shaking pandemic.
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In the 26 years since Golomt Bank opened its doors, it has rapidly grown into a premier commercial bank. In its first two decades, between 1995 and 2015, it expanded to the point where Golomt alone generated business equivalent to a quarter of Mongolia’s gross domestic product.
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At the first hint of crisis, Mongolia usually reaches out to the IMF for financial help. Not this time. Ulaanbaatar reacted swiftly to the Covid pandemic. It is set to emerge from a tough time with its reputation and its finances enhanced.
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Mongolia is an unusual country in many ways. It is vast with poor infrastructure. It has a tiny population, but its cities, particularly the capital, suffer from appalling air pollution. People with disabilities suffer most.
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It has been a busy year for all lenders, but particularly for TransBank. It increased its share capital in the first nine months of 2020 by Tug22 billion, to Tug72 billion ($25 million): this boosted its capital adequacy ratio to 43.48% from 31.5%, and made it Mongolia’s second-highest capitalized lender. The increase brings it in line with central bank demands and improves not only its risk tolerance, but also its ability to deliver the right services to the right customers.
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It will be fascinating to watch LendMN develop as the effects of Covid-19 lessen. Founder Anar Chinbaatar’s big idea was to build a digital payday lender that could approve and disburse a loan in minutes. When LendMN opened for business in 2017, issuing small, unsecured loans, that process generally took most traditional Mongolian lenders several days to do.
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Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia’s long-planned merger with Ulaanbaatar City Bank (UCB), announced in June 2020, made good sense on many levels.
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Khan Bank has a vice-like grip on this award, and for good reason. Its stranglehold on a vast but thinly populated market is all but complete: most parents open up an account at Khan when their child is still in the womb.
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For too long, Mongolia has depended heavily on the resources sector, but banks such as TransBank are making an important push to lend to small and medium-sized enterprises.
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If ever there was a bank that wore its mission statement on its proverbial forehead, it’s the one over which Naranbaatar Radnaa presides. All it takes is walking through the front door of the bank’s modest Ulaanbaatar headquarters to see that sustainability permeates everything Arig does.
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Since October 2016, Otgonbayar Munkhtogoo, chief executive of TransBank, has cut an aggressive figure in Ulaanbaatar financial circles.
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It’s hard to think of any four-year-old company that’s shaken up Mongolia’s financial sector more than LendMN. The fintech sensation’s start in 2015 is the stuff of legend: Anar Chinbaatar and two similarly successful friends – including chief executive Boldbaatar Ochirsuren – became so tired of buddies asking to borrow cash that they figured: why not make the dynamic official?
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Any objective look at the economic landscape in Mongolia suggests it is a place where private banking shouldn’t exist, much less thrive. It has long been an esoteric pursuit in a frontier market that lacks a deep stream of affluent customers. Per-capita income is all of $4,100.
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In 2020, Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia will celebrate both a birthday and a milestone. As the nation’s oldest bank turns 30, its trajectory also speaks to the growing sophistication of a financial sector that has had a decidedly rocky few years. It is only just over two years since a small army of IMF staffers pounced on Ulaanbaatar to remind investors about the risks of boom-and-bust cycles – and the dire need to diversify away from mining.
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No financial institution better traces Mongolia’s event-rich journey from herding and farming hinterland to thriving frontier economy than Khan Bank.
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Bailed out by the IMF to the tune of $5.5 billion, the country hopes to break free of the programme in 2020, but flaws in its financial sector mean that going it alone will be risky.
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Corporate social responsibility permeates everything Arig does. It is a stable and high-quality institution with roots that date back to 1997, making it one of the country’s oldest lenders, and with branches dotted around the big cities. But it is in the world of CSR that Arig really shines.
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Founded in 2001 and partly owned by the International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, XacBank has always been the go-to bank in Mongolia for small and medium-sized enterprises.
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Digital banking has been a big hit in this big country that has barebones infrastructure and a high level of smartphone penetration. A decade ago, most bank transactions were done in the branch; now, that share is below 10% and falling. Disruptive fintech firms are pushing into the sector, forcing traditional banks to up their game.
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A decade ago, private banking was all but unknown in Mongolia. Now, virtually every bank has at least one gleaming office in the capital, dedicated purely to serving the wealthy and their dependants. Golomt Bank offers an expanding repertoire of private banking services, as does the country’s biggest lender, Khan Bank, whose Priority and Signature services, launched in 2010, cater to more than 35,000 customers.
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Mongolia’s big financial institutions are defined almost by design. All are full-service lenders, but while Khan Bank specializes in retail lending and XacBank in serving SMEs, two other outfits – Golomt Bank and Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia – lavish their attention on Mongolia’s big corporates.
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It would be hard to find a part of this vast frontier state that isn’t served by Khan Bank. The former agricultural lender is the country’s best and most-rounded financial institution by a long shot.
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Anar Chinbaatar is wreaking havoc: local banks are running scared of LendMN, a digital payday lender that has disbursed 600,000 loans in just 18 months. The serial tech entrepreneur now plans to transform LendMN into a real digital bank – and take on Asia. Few would bet against him.
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China’s big lenders, led by Bank of China, want full access to Mongolia’s resource-rich market, but local regulators are desperate to keep them out, wary of Beijing’s rising power and influence, and keen to avoid a repeat of past mistakes. Who will win the battle?
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Mongolia began 2017 facing yet another credit crisis. It ended the year clutching a massive IMF-led bailout to reform the central bank, eradicate related-party lending and create a thriving modern banking sector. So much for the theory – now the hard work starts.
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Mongolia is a fascinating case study in digital banking. A handful of years back, barely anyone in this frontier market went online to track and pay bills, transfer cash to friends, or pay for goods and services.
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Private banking is a minority pursuit in a frontier market lacking a deep seam of wealthy customers. But it’s growing, with banks preferring in the main to focus on priority banking services that target the reasonably prosperous.
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It’s hard to miss Arig Bank’s commitment to corporate and social responsibility and to sustainability in general.
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Mongolia’s push to develop a banking sector fit for the 21st century – a process that is being accelerated by a slew of financial reforms – is likely to benefit lenders with a diverse group of shareholders and better transparency and corporate governance.
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It can be hard work being a corporate-focused lender in Mongolia. The last few years have been a slog for many banks as they confront a sluggish economy that often teeters on the edge of insolvency and that offers precious few new lending opportunities.
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Khan Bank is an outlier in Mongolia in many ways. It has a diversified and international – by local standards – investor base that includes Japan-based Sawada Holdings and the IFC, the private-sector arm of the World Bank. And it is both big and small.