LONDON (Alliance News) - Bank of Ireland Friday said it made a EUR920 million pretax profit in 2014, a significant turnaround from the EUR520 million pretax loss reported in 2013, aided by a significant drop in charges on bad loans to customers.
In a statement, Bank of Ireland said that each of its trading divisions is generating profit on an underlying basis.
Its UK retail division swung to an underlying pretax profit of EUR127 million in 2014 from a EUR153 million underlying pretax loss in 2013. Bank of Ireland's UK retail division includes a financial services partnership and foreign exchange joint venture with the UK Post Office, a residential mortgage business, and its branch network and businesses banking businesses in Northern Ireland.
Retail Ireland, which incorporates a range of banking activities in the Republic of Ireland, swung to a EUR328 million underlying pretax profit from a EUR697 million underlying pretax loss. Bank of Ireland Life, which distributes protection, investment and pension products to the Irish market, saw its underlying pretax profit increase to EUR133 million from EUR107 million.
"Having, to date, returned circa EUR6 billion in cash to the Irish taxpayers for their support and EUR4.8 billion investment in Bank of Ireland, we have made further substantial progress against our strategic priorities in 2014. We have grown our new lending by more than 50% to EUR10 billion and were the largest lender to the Irish economy last year," Chief Executive Richie Boucher said in a statement.
"We are confident in the group's prospects. The outlook for the Irish and UK economies remains favourable. We have our strong retail and commercial franchises in these markets and we have resilient and professional people, who are motivated and focused and have a proven track record of delivery," Boucher added.
Bank of Ireland required assistance from the Irish government during the financial crisis of 2007-09, including a EUR3.5 billion recapitalisation. It said Friday it had increased its transitional CET1 ratio to 14.8% during 2014, while its fully loaded CET1 ratio stood at 9.3%.
Bank of Ireland shares in London were up 6.3% at 0.340 pence on Friday.
By Samuel Agini; samagini@alliancenews.com; @samuelagini
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