De­spite a strong end to the year dri­ven by loan growth and in­sur­ance ser­vices, the Sco­tia­bank group record­ed slight­ly less prof­it for the 12-months end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2023 than in its 2022 fi­nan­cial year.

In the com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial re­sults for 2023, Sco­tia­bank re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $678 mil­lion, a $6 mil­lion de­cline over the $684 mil­lion it earned last year.

In its fourth quar­ter, Sco­tia­bank re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $176 mil­lion, which was $18 mil­lion bet­ter than its per­for­mance for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go, Gayle Pa­zos said: “This is the sec­ond suc­ces­sive year that we have post­ed net in­come be­fore tax of over $1 bil­lion, fol­low­ing a record-break­ing per­for­mance in 2022. Per­for­mance in 2023 was sup­port­ed by $1.3 bil­lion or sev­en per cent loan growth across our core busi­ness lines. "

Pa­zos not­ed that in 2023, dig­i­tal adop­tion in­creased to 54 per cent with 75 per cent of to­tal re­tail cus­tomers en­rolled in on­line bank­ing.

“Our con­tin­ued suc­cess is a re­sult of the great ex­e­cu­tion by our team of skilled and ded­i­cat­ed em­ploy­ees, and we thank them for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism and com­mit­ment.”

In the fi­nan­cial state­ments, the to­tal rev­enue, com­pris­ing net in­ter­est in­come and oth­er in­come, was $1.9 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2023, which is an in­crease of $39 mil­lion or two per cent over the pri­or year.

While net in­ter­est in­come for the pe­ri­od was $1.4 bil­lion, an in­crease of $168 mil­lion or 13 per cent, the best re­turn in the group’s his­to­ry, dri­ven by its con­tin­ued cred­it ex­pan­sion and de­ci­sive man­age­ment of its in­vest­ment port­fo­lio, the bank said.

"Oth­er in­come of $523 mil­lion de­creased by $129 mil­lion com­pared to 2022, pri­mar­i­ly due to low­er trad­ing rev­enues, aligned with pre­vail­ing mar­ket con­di­tions. Oth­er in­come re­mains an im­por­tant com­po­nent of our prof­itabil­i­ty and we have seen par­tial off­set­ting growth in key seg­ments such as wealth and in­sur­ance as well as ac­tiv­i­ty-based rev­enues such as card rev­enues,” the Sco­tia­bank said.

The re­port went on to state that the to­tal non-in­ter­est ex­pens­es for the pe­ri­od end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, was $810 mil­lion, high­er by $72 mil­lion or 10 per cent when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

These in­creas­es, it said, are par­tial­ly due to in­creased tech­nol­o­gy costs aligned with its de­liv­ery of en­hanced dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ty, and the chal­lenges of ris­ing price in­fla­tion and its im­pact on di­rect and ac­tiv­i­ty-based costs.

Man­ag­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy re­mains a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty, and its pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ra­tio of 41.8 per cent as of Oc­to­ber 31, re­mains the low­est with­in the lo­cal bank­ing sec­tor, said Sco­tia­bank.