GEISHA ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Sco­tia­bank T&T Lim­it­ed yes­ter­day re­port­ed in­come af­ter tax of $644 mil­lion for the year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2018, a de­crease of $13 mil­lion or two per cent com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2017.

This re­duc­tion in prof­itabil­i­ty was dri­ven by the in­creased cor­po­rate tax rate levied on com­mer­cial banks—from 30 to 35 per cent—com­bined with high­er lev­els of loan loss pro­vi­sion­ing.

How­ev­er, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Stephen Bag­narol said the bank con­tin­ues to high­light its fi­nan­cial strength with re­turn on eq­ui­ty of 16.05 per cent and re­turn on as­sets of 2.69 per cent.

Based on this per­for­mance, the board of di­rec­tors has ap­proved an an­nu­al div­i­dend of $1.50 per or­di­nary share for the quar­ter. This fi­nal quar­ter div­i­dend is payable on Jan­u­ary 14, 2019,

In com­ment­ing on the re­sults, Bag­narol said: “I am pleased to re­port that Sco­tia­bank has once again de­liv­ered an­oth­er year of good fi­nan­cial re­sults. De­spite chal­leng­ing mar­ket and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, our net prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion closed at $963 mil­lion, which is $29 mil­lion, or 3 per cent high­er than the pre­vi­ous year.

“Strong prof­itabil­i­ty year-on-year is tes­ta­ment to the con­fi­dence that our cus­tomers have placed in us, as well as the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion from our team. Over the past year, in ad­di­tion to our dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives, we re­in­forced our com­mit­ment to com­pli­ance, an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures to pro­tect the bank’s and our cus­tomers’ in­for­ma­tion.”

Bag­narol said the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of cus­tomers’ ac­counts and in­for­ma­tion is a top pri­or­i­ty at Sco­tia­bank, as the bank takes this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty very se­ri­ous­ly.

“We have re­cent­ly launched alerts, a fea­ture which will help our cus­tomers mon­i­tor fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty in re­al time and then al­low us to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion.

“I urge you to en­able alerts when you log on to on­line bank­ing. As we ap­proached our new fis­cal year, we were very ex­cit­ed to launch our lat­est prod­uct called ‘Club S’ which is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of us help­ing our cus­tomers be­come bet­ter off.”

Club S mem­ber­ship al­lows cus­tomers, both bank­ing and lifestyle ben­e­fits through mer­chant of­fer­ings.

“It is an ex­cel­lent ini­tia­tive to so­lid­i­fy our strong re­la­tion­ship with our cus­tomers and mem­ber­ship is free,” Bag­narol added.

Re­cent­ly, Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ing Lim­it­ed an­nounced that it is ac­quir­ing Sco­tia­bank op­er­a­tions in Guyana, St. Maarten and the East­ern Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing An­guil­la, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lu­cia, and St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines. Sco­tia­bank TT Ltd and Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd an­nounced a 20-year dis­tri­b­u­tion deal in which in­sur­ance prod­ucts and so­lu­tions, un­der­writ­ten by Sagi­cor, will be of­fered to Sco­tia­bank cus­tomers in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Sco­tia­bank TT has agreed to sell its in­sur­ance sub­sidiary: Sco­tiaL­ife TT Ltd to Sagi­cor.

These re­cent de­vel­op­ments have not af­fect­ed this year’s prof­its.