Panama-based universal bank BAC International Bank Inc. (BIB) will expand its loan portfolio by 10%-12% in 2024 and 2025, according to our expectations, while maintaining its healthy asset quality and solid profitability metrics amid resilient economic activity in Central America. In our opinion, BIB's conservative risk management policies--that include lending, investing, liquidity, and solvency--will provide stability to the bank's credit quality during the next 12-24 months. Therefore, we affirmed our 'BBB-/A-3' long- and short-term global scale issuer credit ratings on BIB. The stable outlook for the next 12-24 months reflects BIB's leading position in Central America and wide geographic diversification, as well as its conservative lending policies that support healthy asset quality, stable capitalization, solid and well-diversified funding, and sound
