Sco­tia­bank T&T Ltd (The Group) is re­port­ing im­proved prof­its for the first nine months of the year. Ac­cord­ing to the bank it has re­alised in­come af­ter tax of $521 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed Ju­ly 31, 2022, an in­crease of $59 mil­lion or 13 per cent over the same pe­ri­od end­ed Ju­ly 31, 2021.

In­come af­ter tax for the quar­ter was $164 mil­lion, $7 mil­lion or five per cent more than the quar­ter end­ing Ju­ly 31, 2021.

“Our im­prove­ment over the pri­or year is dri­ven by con­tin­ued in­creas­es in core bank­ing ac­tiv­i­ty as we see a re­turn to nor­mal op­er­at­ing con­di­tions fol­low­ing the lift­ing of COVID-19 re­stric­tions,” the bank ex­plained in a state­ment.

It al­so not­ed the im­prove­ment in prof­itabil­i­ty has re­sult­ed in an in­creased re­turn on eq­ui­ty from 14.5 per cent in 2021 to 16.2 per cent in 2022 and an in­crease in re­turn on as­sets from 2.3 per cent in 2021 to 2.8 per cent in 2022.

Com­ment­ing on the re­sults, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Sco­tia­bank T&T Ltd Gayle Pa­zos said, “We are pleased to an­nounce an­oth­er sol­id third quar­ter per­for­mance by Sco­tia­bank. We con­tin­ue to see a steady rise in loans to cus­tomers, record­ing an in­crease of $1.3 bil­lion or eight per cent over the last nine months and dri­ving to­tal as­set growth by six per cent when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2021.....Of this $1.3 bil­lion, con­sumer loans rep­re­sent $818 mil­lion, cor­re­spond­ing to our best per­for­mance since 2016.”

She added the bank con­tin­ues to make its prod­ucts and ser­vices more ac­ces­si­ble and con­ve­nient for cus­tomers, not­ing that this quar­ter, Sco­tia launched a “Ba­sic Ac­cess” De­posit Ac­count sup­port­ing self-em­ployed and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es cus­tomers.

Sco­tia In­sur­ance al­so launched a suite of new prod­ucts—Sco­tia El­e­vate, Sco­tia Plat­inum and Sco­tia Lega­cy.

“These ad­di­tions to our prod­uct of­fer­ings will de­liv­er en­hanced fea­tures to our cus­tomers while broad­en­ing their de­posit ca­pa­bil­i­ties, in­sur­ance pro­tec­tion and re­tire­ment op­tions,” Pa­zos added.

Look­ing for­ward, she said Sco­tia is en­cour­aged by the in­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty re­sult­ing from high­er en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty prices and the fi­nal roll back of COVID-19 mea­sures, al­beit tem­pered by con­tin­ued in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures and sup­ply chain is­sues ex­pe­ri­enced glob­al­ly and lo­cal­ly.

Re­gard­ing to­tal rev­enue, com­pris­ing net in­ter­est in­come and oth­er in­come, this was $1.4 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od end­ed

Ju­ly 31, 2022, an in­crease of $133 mil­lion or 10 per cent over the last year.

Net in­ter­est in­come for the pe­ri­od was $916 mil­lion, $12 mil­lion or one per cent low­er when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year, dri­ven by a de­cline in the loan port­fo­lio dur­ing 2021, to­geth­er with con­tin­ued mar­gin com­pres­sion due to com­pet­i­tive pric­ing pres­sures, the bank said.

Sco­tia al­so not­ed core bank­ing rev­enues con­tin­ue to re­cov­er, dri­ven by oth­er in­come growth of $145 mil­lion or 39 per cent to $520 mil­lion in 2022 as it saw in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty in both re­tail and com­mer­cial seg­ments.