Another High Street Bank releases forecast beating financial results.<\/p>\n
Royal Bank of Scotland, which is locked in a takeover battle for ABN Amro, today beat City forecasts with an 11% rise in profits and 25% dividend hike.<\/p>\n
That means Britain’s “Big Five” banks – HSBC, RBS, Barclays, HBOS and Lloyds – have made combined profits of \u00c2\u00a321bn in the first half of the year, higher than experts predicted.<\/p>\n
Underlying operating profits at RBS climbed to \u00c2\u00a35.1bn in the six months to June 30, up from \u00c2\u00a34.6bn a year ago.<\/p>\n
RBS said it paid out approximately \u00c2\u00a381m to settle claims for unauthorised overdraft fees. That compares with a \u00c2\u00a387m payout at Barclays, \u00c2\u00a379m at HBOS, \u00c2\u00a3116m at HSBC and \u00c2\u00a336m at Lloyds TSB, bringing the total payout at the Big Five to \u00c2\u00a3399m.<\/p>\n
RBS has also been hit by insurance claims after heavy floods in June and July, which are expected to total in the region \u00c2\u00a3250m. It is Britain’s second-largest provider of home insurance after Aviva’s Norwich Union. June’s flood claims are estimated to have cost its Direct Line insurance firm around \u00c2\u00a3125m, pulling down profitsthere by 27%.<\/p>\n
Norwich Union said yesterday that the floods would cost it \u00c2\u00a3340m and that premiums would rise by 10% on average as a result.<\/p>\n
RBS shares reversed earlier gains and were down 4.5p to 587p this morning.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, RBS’s investment banking arm, Global Banking & Markets, put in a strong performance with profits up 19%.<\/p>\n
The group’s Citizens business in the US saw profits fall by 7% to \u00c2\u00a3752m because of the weak dollar.<\/p>\n
Sir Fred said: “Some of the structural headwinds we have experienced in retail markets, Citizens and RBS Insurance have begun to abate.”|<\/p>\n
Retail banking profits climbed 10%, and RBS said it believes that personal bad debts have now peaked.<\/p>\n
“Our early action to tighten lending criteria and reduce activitiy in the direct loan market is now reflected in falling arrears and a 7% reduction in retail impairment losses.”<\/p>\n
Sandy Chen, analyst at Panmure Gordon, said: “Good results largely – notable for what they didn’t have, i.e. US sub-prime and related credit derivatives worries. Overall earnings growth – with the exception of Citizens – was solid.”<\/p>\n
The figures come a day after Barclays Bank, RBS’s rival in the race to acquire ABN, reported a 12% rise in profits to \u00c2\u00a34.1bn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another High Street Bank releases forecast beating financial results. Royal Bank of Scotland, which is locked in a takeover battle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}