KUALA LUMPUR (May 29): Alliance Bank Malaysia Bhd is targetting a 7% loans growth for its financial year 2020 (FY20), after the group's loan growth came in at 6% in FY19, missing its 10% growth target.

Nevertheless, its FY19 loan growth still outpaced the industry's loan growth of 4.9%, and the bank remains positive it can meet its new forecast this financial year, according to the bank's chief executive officer Joel Kornreich.

"We were not able to meet the target [in FY19] as the growth was dragged down by our corporate and commercial sectors on the back of a weak market. We were also impacted by various large Government projects that were paused or did not go through," Kornreich told reporters at a press briefing today.

In FY19, the bank's small and medium sized business (SME) and commercial loans expanded 12.9% year-on-year, while its consumer unsecured loans grew 21.4% y-o-y.

Moving forward, Kornreich said the bank will continue to focus on growing its consumer and SME portfolios. They both currently hold a quarter each of the bank's total loan book, with the remaining made up by mortgages.

"We hope to grow our SME loan book by 13% in the next three years," he said.

On the bank's overall performance, Kornreich said he is confident the bank can post double digit growth in net profit for FY20, after recording 9% growth y-o-y in FY19.

This will be suppported by the bank's various strategic transformation initiatives, he said.

In FY19, the bank's net profit climbed 9% to RM537.6 million from RM493.23 million in the previous year, as revenue rose 3% to RM1.62 billion from RM1.57 billion.