Sco­tia­bank T&T Ltd has record­ed an in­come af­ter tax of $185 mil­lion for the quar­ter end­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2022.

This was an in­crease of $39 mil­lion or 27 per cent over the quar­ter end­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2021.

“In a con­tin­u­a­tion of the trend start­ed in 2021, our fi­nan­cial per­for­mance con­tin­ues to im­prove as we be­gin to see signs of re­cov­ery be­gin­ning to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the lo­cal econ­o­my,” a state­ment to share­hold­ers joint­ly signed by Sco­tia­bank T&T’s chair­man Derek Hud­son and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Gayle Pa­zos stat­ed yes­ter­day.

Sco­tia­bank T&T’s to­tal rev­enue for the pe­ri­od was $475 mil­lion or $34 mil­lion more than the same pe­ri­od last year. This in­crease was dri­ven by an in­crease in oth­er in­come by $45 mil­lion as the bank said it con­tin­ues to reg­is­ter re­cov­ery in key core bank­ing ac­tiv­i­ty lines.

“This was par­tial­ly off­set by low­er Net In­ter­est In­come which de­clined by $12 mil­lion or four per cent due to in­ter­est rate com­pres­sion and de­cline in loan bal­ances dur­ing the first half of 2021,” it stat­ed.

“Non-in­ter­est ex­pens­es de­clined by $27 mil­lion or 13 per cent over the quar­ter end­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2021 as we con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from our op­er­a­tional cost fo­cus since the start of the pan­dem­ic. This has im­proved our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty from 45.3 per cent to 36.5 per cent over the same pe­ri­od, re­in­forc­ing our po­si­tion as mar­ket leader with­in the in­dus­try,” it stat­ed.

The group said its main in­ter­est earn­ing as­set, loans to cus­tomers in­creased by $98 mil­lion or one per cent over pri­or year and $560 mil­lion or four per cent quar­ter over quar­ter as it con­tin­ued to see re­cov­ery in dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic seg­ments and in­creased con­sumer de­mand.

“Whilst be­gin­ning to ex­pe­ri­ence loan growth, we have seen an im­prove­ment in the cred­it qual­i­ty of our loan port­fo­lio. Our ra­tio of non-ac­cru­al loans to­tal loans im­prov­ing by 45 bps to 1.90 per cent, re­in­forc­ing our pro-ac­tive strate­gies and in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to as­sist­ing cus­tomers ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties,” it stat­ed.

“These mea­sures cou­pled with con­sis­tent proac­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with cus­tomers has been a ma­jor fac­tor in our abil­i­ty to re­duce our non-ac­cru­als ra­tio to the low­est lev­el that we have ex­pe­ri­enced in the last six years,” it stat­ed.

Sco­tia­bank T&T said its im­prove­ment in busi­ness per­for­mance has ex­tend­ed be­yond the re­tail and com­mer­cial seg­ments.

“Our in­sur­ance seg­ment con­tin­ues to grow with pol­i­cy­hold­er li­a­bil­i­ties grow­ing by $117 mil­lion or sev­en per cent il­lus­trat­ing our cus­tomers con­fi­dence in our prod­ucts and busi­ness mod­el,” it stat­ed.

The Sco­tia­bank T&T board has ap­proved a fi­nal div­i­dend of 65 cents per share this quar­ter com­pared to 60 cents in the pri­or year. This div­i­dend will be payable on April 12 to share­hold­ers on record as at March 28.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS