Mortgage lending at €198m but KBC Ireland profits fall
THE Irish arm of KBC Bank reported a profit of €59m after tax and impairments in the first three months of 2018.
This is down from a profit of
€70.4m reported in the same period last year, as less money previously set aside for bad loans was freed up by the bank.
In a separate update yesterday, KBC Group said that it had released €43m in respect of its Irish operations during the three-month period, previously set aside for bad loans.
The so-called ‘write back’ of loans came about mainly because of the increase in house prices.
KBC expects its full impairment release in Ireland for 2018 to ease to be in the region of
€100m to €150m. During the period the bank reported new mortgage lending of €198m in Ireland, an increase of over 60pc year-on-year, while almost 20,000 new customer accounts were added.
Mortgage cases in arrears were down 3pc in the three months, with nine out of ten customers in difficulty offered a range of solutions, according to the bank.
“I am pleased to report a strong start to 2018 for KBC Bank Ireland with almost 20,000 new customer accounts opened in the first three months of the year,” Wim Verbraeken, CEO of KBC Bank Ireland, said.
“We are seeing growth in all areas of the Irish business with customers banking with KBC for multiple products at a time, especially current accounts and mortgages.”
In relation to the tracker mortgage scandal, the bank rates had been rectified on all impacted tracker mortgage accounts, while 76pc of the identified impacted customers have received redress and compensation.
The bank said it remains on track to meet its commitment to complete redress and compensation to all impacted customers by the end of June 2018.
Overall, KBC Group reported a profit of €556m for the threemonth period.
The bank said the improved performance of its International Markets business unit, which reported a net result of €137m, related primarily to Ireland “where the previous quarter’s result had been negatively impacted by additional provisioning of €61.5m for an industry-wide review of the tracker mortgages originated before 2009.”