CN : Banks - Time in the sun

We recommend an Overweight rating on the banks across the region, and have a preference for Indonesian, South Korean and Singaporean banks. These banks are better placed for the three themes of rising rates, credit cost normalisation and highly attractive defensive valuations, in our view. We thus see the continuation of the strong bank outperformance in 2022 YTD against their respective country indices. Top pick among banks in Indonesia, South Korea and Singapore are Bank Rakyat, Shinhan Financial and UOB, respectively.