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tate-owned lender Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) will continue its inorganic growth this year as it plans to acquire a smaller bank, while also looking at buying a general insurance firm, its executives have said.

Before actually deciding on which bank to acquire this year, the publicly listed lender will calculate the assets and pricing of the prospective target, said BNI president director Achmad Baiquni.

BNI should also assess whether the prospective bank could complement its core business, he said.

“We have always set inorganic growth targets in our annual RBB [bank business plan]. But it’s true that looking for a prospective company is not easy,” he said in a press conference on Wednesday.

The idea to buy a general insurer, meanwhile, was based on the fact that BNI needed to complete its insurance business line, as it already had a life insurance subsidiary called BNI Life Insurance, he said

Aside from the bank and insurance sectors, BNI saw potential to own a subsidiary in the form of venture capital, said BNI finance director Rico Rizal Budidarmo.

Rico said the bank had allocated Rp 3 trillion (US$210 million) this year for the acquisition plan as well as capital injections to its subsidiaries.

The bank has previously injected Rp 1 trillion of fresh funds into its Islamic lender subsidiary BNI Syariah.

Aside from BNI Life and BNI Syariah, the bank owns three other subsidiaries, namely BNI Securities, BNI Asset Management and BNI Multifinance.

As for its organic growth this year, BNI plans to grow loans by double-digits, driven by expansion in business and consumer banking.

BNI forecasts its lending growth to hover between 15 and 17 percent this year, higher than the 2017 growth of 12.2 percent to Rp 441.31 trillion.

“Loans to the infrastructure sector will remain the driver of our credit growth [in the corporate segment] in 2018,” Baiquni said.

Investment credit, which is part of the bank’s business banking segment, is also expected to increase, taking into account better global economic conditions in major countries, such as the United States and Europe, despite the current slowdown in China.

Baiquni said the global economic improvement would be a good stimulus for investors to invest their money in emerging countries such as Indonesia, considering that the country had relatively good GDP growth at around 5 percent and a well-maintained inflation rate.

BNI posted Rp 441.31 trillion in total outstanding loans in 2017.

Loans that went to the business banking segment totaled Rp 345.5 trillion, or 78.3 percent of its total loans, while consumer banking accounted for Rp 71.4 trillion or 16.2 percent of the bank’s total portfolio.

BNI consumer banking director Anggoro Eko Cahyo said the lender also aimed to book double-digit growth in consumer banking with a focus on payroll loans, even though loans in that segment only grew by 9.8 percent last year.

Mortgages will also become the bank’s other priority in consumer banking, he continued, expecting better prospects in the property market than last year.

Meanwhile, the bank’s net profit increased by 20.1 percent year-on-year to Rp 13.62 trillion last year, driven by stronger loan growth and higher non-interest income.

BNI saw growth of 13.9 percent in non-interest income to Rp 9.78 trillion in 2017, supported by an increase in fee-based income from trade finance and remittance transactions.

The bank’s non-performing loan ratio improved to 2.3 percent, well above its previous level of 3 percent. It achieved that level following a write-off of bad debts totaling Rp 8 trillion last year.