State-owned company Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) hopes to expand its international division by adding new branches overseas.

Currently, BNI has eight overseas offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Osaka, London, New York, Seoul and Yangon.

“We are interested [in expanding] into three countries in Asia and one in the southern hemisphere. It will depend on the negotiation terms,” Panji Irawan, BNI treasury and international director, said recently. However, he declined to reveal the potential locations.

BNI must consider several factors before opening new branches overseas, including whether it can obtain the necessary licenses in each country to provide many services for its customers.

BNI international division head Henry Panjaitan said the best option was to obtain a full branch license, as it did in Singapore, so that it would be able to offer services ranging from corporate to retail banking.

“We have a wide range of customers from corporations to students. So, we have to make sure that we are able to serve them all,” he said.

Moreover, the lender must ensure that business conglomerates want to expand their businesses to the destination country and BNI must also take into account the size of the Indonesian diaspora in the location. As of the third quarter, BNI’s earnings before tax from international office branches jumped by 20.7 percent to US$40.7 million. The total assets from these branches also grew by 65 percent to $4.9 billion.

To boost its performance in the international business division, BNI will improve the information technology capacity of all of its branches overseas so it can reach out to more customers, Henry said.

The lender’s international division is one of three lines of business that have helped boost its net profits. BNI’s international, treasury and financial institution pension fund (DPLK) businesses contributed 30 percent of the lender’s total earnings before tax of Rp 12.21 trillion by September.

BNI data show that its treasury business amounted to $276 billion as of the third quarter of the year, meaning the bank managed $1.5 billion of money in circulation every day. BNI’s treasury business includes services for foreign exchange, bank notes, fixed income and money markets.

The treasury division recorded Rp 1.79 trillion in earnings before tax as of September, 107 percent of the company’s initial target.

Meanwhile, its DPLK business recorded a market share of 25.45 percent as of September, higher than Manulife Indonesia, Mandiri DPLK and BRI DPLK, among others. Its assets under management in the DPLK business stood at Rp 19.7 trillion by October.

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