Sampath Bank achieves stable results amidst economic headwinds
While the country was showing signs of a broader economic upturn in 2023, Sampath Bank remained strong in supporting customers who continued to experience stress due to pressures accumulated over the past few years.
Spearheaded by its Credit Nursing Unit, the bank offered a variety of relief measures, including tailor-made repayment plans, restructures, and rescheduling solutions, to provide much-needed breathing space for distressed customers. This enabled them to focus on revitalising their businesses, it said in a media release. Additionally, the bank provided financial counseling and business advisory services to empower customers to access fresh equity, seed capital, and other resources to transform their business models.
Regardless of continuing uncertainties and challenging economic conditions throughout the year, profitability remained in line with expectations as the bank's Profit Before Taxes on financial services stood at Rs. 38.4 billion, a 89.9 per cent increase over the previous year’s achievement of Rs. 20.2 billion.
However, considering the impact of higher tax expenses, the Profit After Tax (PAT) demonstrated a reduced improvement of 30.5 per cent, rising from Rs.13.1 billion in the previous year to Rs. 17.1 billion for the year ended 31st December 2023.
Despite the decrease in the impairment charge on loans and advances by Rs.36.3 billion compared to 2022, the total provision cover of the bank increased by 200 basis points, rising from 11.8 per cent as at the end of 2022 to 13.8 per cent as at the end of 2023.
The overall reduction in impairment charges against loans and advances was attributed, on one hand, to the gradual revival in economic activities, and on the other hand, to Sampath Bank’s prudent provisioning approaches in 2022. These approaches led to the build-up of additional provision coverage for risk-elevated segments in the loans and advances portfolio.
The collective impairment charge decreased by Rs.19.9 billion to Rs.1.8 billion in 2023 compared to previous year.