ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd record­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of $118.84 mil­lion for the first nine months of its 2024 fi­nan­cial year, a 24.4 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $95.4 mil­lion the com­pa­ny earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2023. 

This is ac­cord­ing to the bank’s unau­dit­ed in­ter­im re­sults nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

In his state­ment, ANSA Mer­chant chair­man A Nor­man Sab­ga ex­plained that the bank­ing and in­sur­ance busi­ness­es earned net op­er­at­ing in­come of $505 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 2024, 9.8 per cent low­er than the pri­or pe­ri­od’s re­stat­ed com­par­a­tive of $560 mil­lion. How­ev­er, op­er­at­ing prof­it was in line with the pri­or pe­ri­od’s re­stat­ed prof­it of $129 mil­lion.

In 2023, the quar­ter­ly re­sults were pre­sent­ed un­der IFRS 4 (in­sur­ance con­tracts), while this year, the quar­ter­ly re­sults are be­ing pre­sent­ed us­ing the up­dat­ed IFRS 17 ac­count­ing stan­dard in­sur­ance con­tracts. There­fore, to fa­cil­i­tate com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty, the pri­or pe­ri­od’s re­sults have been re­stat­ed.

Earn­ings per share for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber, 2024 in­creased by 24 per cent to $1.39 from $1.12 in the com­pa­ra­ble pe­ri­od in 2023.

As­sets on the group’s bal­ance sheet in­creased by 1.6 per cent over the pri­or year to $10.02 bil­lion, while sat­is­fy­ing all reg­u­la­to­ry cap­i­tal guide­lines.

Sab­ga al­so not­ed that the bank­ing seg­ment, com­pris­ing ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd, ANSA Mer­chant Bank (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd and ANSA Bank Ltd, record­ed net op­er­at­ing in­come of $337 mil­lion (2023: $331 mil­lion) and prof­it be­fore tax of $76.5 mil­lion (2023: $102 mil­lion).

“Sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments con­tin­ue to be made to en­hance ANSA bank’s dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ties to bet­ter serve our cus­tomers and ex­pand both our re­tail and com­mer­cial bank­ing di­vi­sions,” Sab­ga added.

The in­sur­ance seg­ment, com­pris­ing Tatil, Tatil Life, Colfire and Tri­dent, earned net op­er­at­ing in­come of $212 mil­lion (2023: $315 mil­lion) and prof­it be­fore tax of $89 mil­lion (2023: $61 mil­lion) for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 2024.

Year-on-year, Sab­ga said this seg­ment has ex­pe­ri­enced growth in core busi­ness lines and con­tin­ues to demon­strate re­silience notwith­stand­ing the com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment cou­pled with sub­stan­tial claims in­fla­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the mo­tor line of busi­ness.

He said he was al­so pleased to re­port that Cari­CRIS has reaf­firmed the high cred­it wor­thi­ness rat­ings of Cari­AA and ttAA for the ANSA Mer­chant Bank Group for the third con­sec­u­tive year.