Moody’s Upgrades Dubai Islamic Bank Ratings

Moody’s Investors Service has upgraded Dubai Islamic Bank’s (DIB) local and foreign currency long-term issuer ratings to A3 from Baa1. The outlook for the bank has been changed from positive to stable. Moody's also upgraded the bank’s baseline credit assessment (BCA), adjusted BCA as well as the long and short-term counterparty risk assessment. The primary driver for the BCA upgrade is the bank’s significant improvement in its asset quality and provisioning coverage. The upgrade also captures DIB’s improving profitability in recent years, with return on assets (ROA) improving to 2.0% for 2016. DIB said that its net income rose 13.8% in the second quarter to Dh1.1 billion compared with Dh929 million in the same period last year. Going forward, the rating agency expects that the bank’s net profitability may face modest pressure, due to increased funding costs, but that it will remain above the domestic average and global median.