Sco­tia­bank T&T yes­ter­day re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $501.86 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed 31 Ju­ly 2023, a 3.68 per cent de­cline com­pared with the $521.07 mil­lion it earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

The bank said s the lo­cal econ­o­my slow­ly re­cov­ers from the im­pact of record in­fla­tion in ear­ly 2023, busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ues to im­prove in both its en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy sec­tors, cou­pled with a steady de­mand for re­tail bank­ing prod­ucts.

In its fi­nan­cial re­port, Sco­tia­bank not­ed: “To­tal rev­enue, com­pris­ing of net in­ter­est in­come and oth­er in­come, was $1.5 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od end­ed 31 Ju­ly 2023, an in­crease of $19 mil­lion or 1 per cent over the pri­or year. Net in­ter­est in­come for the pe­ri­od was $1.1 bil­lion, an in­crease of $145 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 it was al­so that stat­ed that for the nine month pe­ri­od it re­ceived oth­er in­come of $397 mil­lion de­creased by $125 mil­lion com­pared to 2022 pri­mar­i­ly due to low­er trad­ing rev­enues, aligned with pre­vail­ing mar­ket con­di­tions.

Sco­tia­bank stat­ed: “Oth­er in­come re­mains an im­por­tant com­po­nent of our prof­itabil­i­ty and we have seen par­tial off­set­ting growth in key seg­ments such as wealth as well as ac­tiv­i­ty-based in­come such as card rev­enues.”

Non-in­ter­est ex­pens­es in­creased by $52 mil­lion or 10 per cent com­pared to 31 Ju­ly 2022, re­flec­tive of a com­bi­na­tion of in­fla­tion­ary im­pacts on its cost struc­ture, high­er ac­tiv­i­ty-re­lat­ed costs and in­creased tech­no­log­i­cal costs, said the bank, ex­plain­ing that the in­creased tech­no­log­i­cal costs were aligned with its de­liv­ery of en­hanced dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ty as well as im­proved qual­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of bank­ing ser­vices pro­vid­ed to our cus­tomers.

Sco­tia­bank said it ac­tive­ly man­ages its cost struc­ture and ex­pects longer term ben­e­fits from its tech­nol­o­gy build while fo­cus­ing on sus­tain­able growth.

“Our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ra­tio of 41 per cent re­mains best in class in the lo­cal bank­ing sec­tor. We con­tin­u­ous­ly as­sess the im­pacts of po­ten­tial risks as­so­ci­at­ed with the cred­it qual­i­ty of our loan port­fo­lios and ac­tive­ly man­age these ex­po­sures,” said Sco­tia­bank. The bank added that for the nine months end­ed Ju­ly 31, 2023, net im­pair­ment loss­es re­mained con­sis­tent with pri­or year lev­els and the Group’s ra­tio of non-ac­cru­al loans to to­tal loans re­mained un­der 2 per cent re­flect­ing the high qual­i­ty of the loan port­fo­lio.

The bank said it record­ed “strong growth” on its bal­ance sheet with to­tal as­sets in­creas­ing by $522 mil­lion or 2 per cent com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed, Gayle Pa­zos said,“We con­tin­ue to build on the mo­men­tum with an­oth­er sol­id quar­ter­ly per­for­mance, record­ing strong as­set growth across all core busi­ness lines with loans to cus­tomers grow­ing by $1.4 bil­lion or 8 per cent year over year.

“We have reg­is­tered an in­crease in mar­ket share de­spite the in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket, demon­strat­ing the con­fi­dence that our cus­tomers con­tin­ue to place in us.”

Sco­tia­bank said its board and the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team are work­ing to pre­serve share­hold­ers’ val­ue, and as a re­sult it an­nounced that the di­rec­tors have ap­proved a third quar­ter div­i­dend of $0.70 per share.

The div­i­dends are payable to share­hold­ers on the reg­is­ter of mem­bers as at Sep­tem­ber 18, 2023, by Oc­to­ber 9, 2023.