Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go has so far record­ed an in­come af­ter tax­a­tion of over half a bil­lion dol­lars for the fi­nan­cial year 2019, the com­pa­ny’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults have stat­ed.

“Year to date in­come af­ter tax­a­tion was $524 mil­lion, an in­crease of $40 mil­lion or eight per cent over the same pe­ri­od last year. This in­crease in prof­itabil­i­ty is main­ly due to in­creased in­come from our core bank­ing seg­ments, cou­pled with low­er tax ex­pense,” a re­port singed by Sco­tia­bank’s Chair­man Bren­dan King and man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Stephen Bag­narol stat­ed.

As a re­sult, the bank has an­nounced a quar­ter­ly div­i­dend of 50 cents per share which will be payable on Oc­to­ber 15.

Sco­tia­bank re­alised in­come af­ter tax­a­tion of $181 mil­lion for the quar­ter end­ed Ju­ly 31.

“Loans to cus­tomers reg­is­tered strong growth of $1.3 bil­lion or ten per cent year over year with the ma­jor­i­ty of the growth be­ing dri­ven in our cor­po­rate and com­mer­cial seg­ments. Cor­re­spond­ing­ly, de­posits from cus­tomers in­creased by $528 mil­lion or three per cent for the nine months of the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year,” the re­port stat­ed.

“De­spite a chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment and a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket, the Group’s net in­ter­est in­come in­creased by $27 mil­lion or three per cent over the pri­or year, dri­ven main­ly by growth in the re­tail and com­mer­cial loan port­fo­lio,” it stat­ed.

The qual­i­ty of the bank’s loan port­fo­lio re­mained sta­ble over the pe­ri­od the re­port stat­ed.

“The Group con­tin­ues to main­tain a low cost base as ev­i­denced by a low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ra­tio of 40 per cent. Net im­pair­ment loss­es de­creased by $1 mil­lion or one per cent year over year as the Group con­tin­ues to ex­er­cise a pru­dent risk man­age­ment ap­proach in man­ag­ing its loan loss pro­vi­sion­ing,” the chair­man’s re­port stat­ed.

“The cred­it qual­i­ty of our loan port­fo­lio has re­mained sta­ble as the ra­tio of non-ac­cru­al loans to to­tal loans was 2.31 per cent at the end of the pe­ri­od,” it stat­ed.