sto­ries by KY­RON REG­IS

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd (AM­BL) has record­ed 32 per cent in­crease in net prof­it for the third quar­ter (Q3) end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, as it record­ed $9.9 mil­lion in­crease from its 2019 fig­ure of $30.8 mil­lion.

In the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial state­ments, Chair­man A Nor­man Sab­ga added that the bank group earned a con­sol­i­dat­ed prof­it be­fore tax (PBT) of $57 mil­lion for the three month pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2020, as com­pared to $50 mil­lion in the same quar­ter of last year, in in­crease of 16 per cent year over year.

Sab­ga said how­ev­er, “This im­proved per­for­mance was not ad­e­quate to ab­sorb the non-cash mark-to-mar­ket loss­es of the first half of the year at the height of the glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, but show’s the re­silience of our busi­ness mod­el, and we ex­pect a strong 4th quar­ter of 2020.”

Year to date, AM­BL’s con­sol­i­dat­ed PBT of $104 mil­lion for the nine month pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, still trails the con­sol­i­dat­ed PBT of $208 mil­lion for the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od of 2019, “as un­re­alised loss­es in the in­vest­ment port­fo­lios have amount­ed to $70 mil­lion and we pru­dent­ly in­creased our IFRS 9 pro­vi­sion­ing in view of the for­ward look­ing eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors.” Sab­ga ex­plained.

Nonethe­less, Sab­ga said that it is note­wor­thy that one of AM­BL’s core busi­ness lines of re­tail lend­ing for the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try ef­fec­tive­ly faced a three-month pe­ri­od of clo­sure dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, which had a cor­re­spond­ing im­pact on lend­ing vol­umes.

The Chair­man in­di­cat­ed that the group’s in­sur­ance busi­ness­es, TATIL and TATIL Life, re­main well cap­i­tal­ized and have both re­flect­ed im­proved per­for­mance giv­en strong pre­mi­um in­come growth and a mod­est re­cov­ery in sev­er­al in­vest­ment class­es.

He not­ed that the com­pa­nies to­geth­er achieved prof­its of $33 mil­lion for the three-month pe­ri­od end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2020, ver­sus $13 mil­lion in the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od of 2019.

How­ev­er, Sab­ga re­vealed “they are still ma­te­ri­al­ly be­hind 2019 on a year-to-date ba­sis due to the ef­fects of the in­vest­ment and se­cu­ri­ties mar­kets, es­pe­cial­ly in T&T.”

Mean­while, the Chair­man not­ed that AM­BL’s Mu­tu­al Funds and Wealth Man­age­ment port­fo­lios con­tin­ue to per­form ad­mirably when com­pared to bench­marks and are well poised for growth in As­sets un­der Man­age­ment.

He con­tin­ued: “Our Bar­ba­dos bank­ing op­er­a­tion, CFC, and Bry­dens In­sur­ance in Bar­ba­dos con­tin­ue to build their books of busi­ness with promis­ing top lines, al­beit slow­er than ex­pec­ta­tions giv­en the eco­nom­ic cli­mate in Bar­ba­dos.”

Sab­ga ar­tic­u­lat­ed that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to im­pact AM­BL’s busi­ness­es and the mar­kets in which they op­er­ate. How­ev­er, he ex­pressed that the Bank Group re­mains in a very strong po­si­tion from a cap­i­tal, liq­uid­i­ty and bal­ance sheet per­spec­tive.

He dis­closed that while the com­pa­ny can­not pre­dict the sever­i­ty or longevi­ty of the virus’s im­pact on glob­al and re­gion­al economies, it will con­tin­ue to serve its clients with ex­cel­lence and with­out com­pro­mis­ing their safe­ty or that of its staff.

Sab­ga al­so as­sert­ed that AML will “re­main ag­ile to cap­i­tal­ize on fu­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­pand, such as our im­pend­ing for­ay in­to com­mer­cial bank­ing.”