Pierre Imhof is burdened with a problem that many bankers would envy.

By his own admission, the French-born chief executive of Baiduri Bank, the closest thing to a privately owned local bank in the autocratic and oil-drenched sultanate of Brunei, has too much cash on the books.

Take Baiduri’s financial statement for calendar 2016. Of the bank’s Br$3.13 billion ($2.3 billion) in assets reported that year, some Br$1.64 billion, or 53%, were in cash and short-term funds.

That excludes the Br$154 million that Baiduri says it had in mandatory reserves held at Brunei’s state monetary authority. By contrast, Singapore’s DBS reported around 6% of its assets as cash and balances with central banks in its 2016 accounts.

Banks exist largely to lend, but in Brunei “our banking and financial sector for years has had a strong excess of liquidity,” says Imhof, almost apologetically.