ABA has further reduced its interest rates on fixed deposits. Now, the largest bank in Cambodia offers 2.00% interest on 1-3 year USD deposits with monthly payouts and 2.25% for payout at maturity. For KHR deposits, the rates are 2.25% and 2.75%, respectively. We removed ABA from our comparisons because no one in their right mind would put money in an account with such low returns. We replaced ABA with BIC Bank.
We wanted to include Mohanokor MFI, the fourth microfinance institution taking in deposits, so we needed to replace another bank to keep our comparisons limited to 10 financial institutions. It was a tough choice between ACLEDA Bank and Canadia Bank. ACLEDA Bank offers slightly better rates for KHR deposits but clearly worse rates for USD accounts. Since we prefer USD deposits to KHR deposits, we decided to remove ACLEDA.
For your information, we only consider including financial institutions that clearly publish their current interest rates on their respective websites.
Our new addition, Mohanokor, is the smallest of the four microfinance deposit-taking institutions (MDIs), but it offers the highest returns on fixed deposits. However, you should exercise caution, as Mohanokor is operating at a net loss and has the highest percentage of non-performing loans (almost 20%), as detailed in the 2024 Supervision Report of the National Bank of Cambodia.
In other news: Amret slightly reduced its rates on USD deposits (by 0.10 percentage points), and now offers the same rates for USD and KHR deposits.
