Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go has seen a drop in prof­its for the first six months of fis­cal year 2023 com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

In the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial re­port for the six month pe­ri­od end­ed April 30, 2023, the com­pa­ny record­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $344 mil­lion, $12 mil­lion less than the $356 mil­lion prof­it the com­pa­ny gained dur­ing the same pe­ri­od last year.

Gayle Pa­zos, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sco­tia­bank T&T, De­spite the drop in prof­its, the com­pa­ny an­nounced im­proved re­turns to its share­hold­ers, said, “De­spite in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures im­pact­ing our ex­pense pro­file, I am pleased with the group’s core per­for­mance. Op­er­a­tional rev­enue con­tin­ues to im­prove, with net in­ter­est in­come im­prov­ing by 16 per cent year over year and 4 per cent over the last quar­ter.”

Pa­zos point­ed out that the bank was see­ing im­prove­ment in terms of loan sales.

She said, “Re­tail and com­mer­cial loans col­lec­tive­ly grew by $1.5 bil­lion or 9 per cent, demon­strat­ing the strength of our busi­ness lines, the con­fi­dence that our cus­tomers con­tin­ue to place in us and our com­mit­ment to our mar­ket.”

The com­pa­ny’s to­tal rev­enue, com­pris­ing of net in­ter­est in­come and oth­er in­come, was $974 mil­lion for the pe­ri­od end­ed April 30, 2023, an in­crease of $22 mil­lion or 2 per cent over the pri­or year.

Net in­ter­est in­come for the pe­ri­od was $695 mil­lion, an in­crease of $98 mil­lion or 16 per cent, dri­ven by growth in loans to re­tail and cor­po­rate/com­mer­cial cus­tomers com­bined with im­proved yields on the group’s in­vest­ment port­fo­lio. How­ev­er for the six months end­ed April 30, 2023, oth­er in­come of $280 mil­lion de­creased by $76 mil­lion com­pared to 2022 pri­mar­i­ly due to low­er trad­ing rev­enues.

She al­so hailed the com­pa­ny’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion which has im­proved cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships “through new tools and ad­vance­ments that help them con­duct their busi­ness faster, eas­i­er and more se­cure­ly.”

She al­so an­nounced that Sco­tia Ac­cess cus­tomers would have ac­cess to new tools of­fer­ing ded­i­cat­ed sup­port at the touch of a but­ton through the Sco­tia App. This, she ex­plained, would con­sol­i­date the bank’s po­si­tion as an in­dus­try leader in terms of dig­i­tal bank­ing us­age.

She said: “We are first to the lo­cal mar­ket with this dig­i­tal func­tion­al­i­ty, en­abling our Sco­tia Ac­cess cus­tomers to have in­stant mes­sag­ing, voice and video call­ing with their des­ig­nat­ed ad­vi­sors with­in our se­cured bank­ing plat­form.

“Our cus­tomers con­tin­ue to em­brace our dig­i­tal plat­forms with a record dig­i­tal adop­tion of 51.7 per cent, and dig­i­tal trans­ac­tions stood at 2.4 mil­lion, an in­crease of 20 per cent year over year.”