YEREVAN, April 23, /ARKA/. Ameriabank has designed a new ‘unprecedented’ product for local financial market as part of its innovation strategy, the so-called ‘structural’ deposit. The minimum amount of this deposit is $40,000, the bank said in a press release, adding that the new service is both for individual and corporate clients.

The new product allows customers to enter global markets and make profits from the difference of prices of oil, gold, Dow Jones indexes and other basic commodities. The risk of losing deposits is equal to zero, the press release said.

The new deposit consists of two components. The first one is a profit from fixed interest rate. The second is an additional profit generating at global markets from the varying prices of basic commodities.

The aggregate profit of Ameriabank and Cascade Bank after they merged earlier this year amounted to 654 million Drams in Q1. The total capital of both banks is about 30 billion Drams and in terms of capital size it is now the second largest Armenian bank. The merged bank’s assets grew in the first quarter by 36% to 110.5 billion Drams. Ameriabank’s credit portfolio in the first quarter of 2010 grew by 7 billion Drams to 60 billion Drams, a sizeable portion of which was extended to mall and medium-sized businesses and about 80% of the growth was secured by new clients and implementation of package projects. The bank’s overall credit investments after the merger with Cascade Bank rose to 71.9 billion Drams. -0-