Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $166.54 mil­lion for the three-month pe­ri­od end­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2025, which was an in­crease of 1.38 per cent com­pared to the $164.26 mil­lion it re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2024.

For the pe­ri­od No­vem­ber 1, 2024 to Jan­u­ary 31, 2025, the pub­licly list­ed com­mer­cial bank re­port­ed to­tal rev­enue of $493.78 mil­lion, a 2.61 per cent in­crease com­pared to rev­enue of $481.19 mil­lion in its first quar­ter in the pri­or year.

" This in­crease was achieved through con­tin­ued strong ex­pan­sion in loan bal­ances in both re­tail and com­mer­cial seg­ments. Oth­er in­come de­creased by $23 mil­lion or 17 per cent aris­ing from low­er trad­ing rev­enue due to mar­ket dy­nam­ics," ac­cord­ing to the re­port on the bank's first quar­ter per­for­mance by chair­man, Derek Hud­son and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Gayle Pa­zos.

Sco­tia­bank al­so held its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day. At the meet­ing, Sco­tia­bank's chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer Re­shard Mo­hammed con­firmed the bank saw prof­it af­ter tax in­crease by $3 mil­lion to $658m for year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2024.

This rep­re­sent­ed a one per cent in­crease over the bank's 2023 per­for­mance.

He said, " This is the third suc­ces­sive year that we have post­ed net in­come be­fore tax of over $1 bil­lion, fol­low­ing a record high in 2022. The 2024 per­for­mance was char­ac­terised by strong growth in lend­ing ac­tiv­i­ties across key seg­ments off­set by the con­tin­ued im­pact of in­fla­tion lead­ing to high­er op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es cou­pled with changes in mar­ket con­di­tions that ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed oth­er in­come."

Mo­hammed con­firmed the bank saw fur­ther ex­pan­sion of its loan port­fo­lio over the pe­ri­od.

He said, "Net loans to cus­tomers of $20.9 bil­lion as at Oc­to­ber 31,2024 rep­re­sents an in­crease of $2.1 bil­lion or 11 per cent over pri­or year. This is the third con­sec­u­tive year where we have ex­ceed­ed $1 bil­lion with in­creas­es seen in re­tail bank­ing which grew by 6 per cent and com­mer­cial bank­ing which grew by 25 per cent."

This was echoed by Chair­man Derek Hud­son, who said, "Our core bank­ing op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue to im­prove year over year, with to­tal as­sets of cir­ca $31.4 bil­lion defin­ing an in­crease of $1.6 bil­lion or 6 per cent over 2023. A per­for­mance which out­paces our peers for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year. The main dri­ver to this dur­ing the fis­cal year was loan to cus­tomers growth of $2.1 bil­lion or 12 per cent, the high­est sin­gle year growth in our his­to­ry. "

How­ev­er the claim of the bank's growth was ques­tioned by a share­hold­er dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment of the AGM, as he stat­ed based on his re­search of the com­pa­ny's pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial state­ments, the bank's growth ap­peared stag­nant.

How­ev­er Mo­hammed ex­plained that the com­pa­ny's pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial state­ments would not re­flect that growth due to ad­just­ments re­quired for the com­pa­ny's in­sur­ance seg­ment.

He said, "One thing I would say about the fi­nan­cials from two years ago, it is not di­rect­ly com­pa­ra­ble to the 2024 re­sults sim­ply be­cause we have had a re­in­state­ment un­der our in­sur­ance sub­sidiary and prof­its have changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly from what was re­port­ed two years ago to what is re­port­ed now."

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Gayle Pa­zos added that the bank con­tin­ues to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties to low­er its over­all car­bon foot­print through the de­sign of its build­ings by re­duc­ing en­er­gy con­sump­tion and im­prov­ing the en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, while she al­so stressed that the com­pa­ny had placed spe­cial em­pha­sis of dig­i­tal trans­ac­tions.

"We have made con­sid­er­able en­hance­ments to our mer­chant ser­vices, bring­ing se­cure and in­no­v­a­tive pay­ment so­lu­tions with the high­est stan­dard of ser­vice and tech­nol­o­gy. We cre­at­ed our pro­pri­etary ap­pli­ca­tion which in­te­grates un­manned so­lu­tions/kiosks. Clients can now ac­cept and process pay­ments through self-check and kiosk ser­vices, pro­vid­ing them with seam­less, self-suf­fi­cient tech­nol­o­gy which al­lows fund col­lec­tions cred­it­ed to ac­counts in 24 hours," said Pa­zos.