Scotia Group profits down
Published:Thursday | December 10, 2020 | 5:27 PM
The management of Jamaica’s number two banking group remains upbeat despite a fall in profits.
Scotia Group Jamaica’s bottom line re-entered the sub-$10 billion region for the first time since 2015. Annual earnings fell by $4 billion, from $13.2 billion in 2019 to $9.1 billion at year ending October 2020, but President and CEO David Noel says the bank did well in light of the pandemic.
He is buoyed by fourth quarter results for the August-October period which returned profits of $3.5 billion, doubling the earnings of the third quarter.
“With that Q4 performance our year-end profit number is $9.1 billion, it’s lower than the $13 last year but that was primarily attributable to the increased provisions for credit losses and a one-time restructuring provision that we incurred in Q4, all driven by the global pandemic,” Noel said at a media briefing on Thursday.
Absent the ‘expected credit losses’ that accounting rules require financial institutions to recognise, and a one-time restructuring charge, profit would have dipped just 2.4 per cent or by $380 million, the bank said in its earnings report.
“While we’re not out of the pandemic and there’s still material risk to the global and the Jamaican economy we are cautiously optimistic that with vaccines being on the horizon, our tourism industry, although nowhere close to where it was at pre-COVID levels, they are accepting visitors to the island. We are cautiously optimistic that if those trends continue, 2021 will be strong and 2022 even stronger,” Noel said at the briefing, his last as head of the banking group.
Noel will be succeeded on January 1 by Audrey Tugwell-Henry.