The recent financial reports of 18 banks in Iran, show that the performance of some small, private banks has been superior to the state-owned larger banks.
Out of the 36 banks and financial institutions in Iran, 19 are listed at the Stock Exchange Market and therefore are expected to release their data.
However, Pasargad Bank has not done so for the past two consecutive years.
According to these reports, the top three banks with most assets in Iran are Bank Mellat with 2,220 thousand billion rials (17.1 billion USD*), Saderat Bank with 1,790 thousand billion rials (13.8 billion USD) and Bank Tejarat with 1,391 thousand billion rials (10.7 billion USD).
On the other hand, the three banks, Hekmat Bank, Middle East Bank and Post Bank are the smallest ones according to their assets.
However, considering other factors, these small banks had a better performance.
Donyaye Eghtesad has compared profit margins of these 18 banks. The top three banks are Middle East Bank 44.2%, Ansar Bank 18.5% and Karafarin Bank with 13.4%. On the other hand, Bank Tejarat, Saderat Bank and Tourism Bank were the most loss-making banks.
Considering the ROA (Return on Asset), again Middle East Bank 2.6%, Ansar Bank 0.8% and Karafarin Bank and Sina Bank both with 0.4% comes on top of the list.
Donyaye Eghtesad concludes that since some of the large banks in Iran have been cut from SWIFT, it makes sense to use the capacity at the smaller banks connected to SWIFT which had a better performance with respect to larger ones.
* Exchange rate assumed 1 USD = 130,000 rials