William 'Bill' Clarke, director of BNS -Winston Sill photo
Dennise Williams, Staff Reporter
ON THE heels of the Bank of Nova Scotia (Jamaica) Ltd.'s (BNS) strong showing for their financial year ending October 31, 2003, where profit after taxes leapt 41 per cent over the last corresponding period from $3.87 billion to $5.457 billion, the company announced equally impressive first quarter results for the period ending January 31, 2004.
Speaking at BNS's annual general meeting held at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel on February 20th, managing director of BNS, William (Bill) Clarke, revealed that the bank continued their "strong performance into 2004 reporting net income of $1.685 billion, an increase of $686 million or 69 per cent over net profit for the first quarter of 2003. Total assets at the end of January 31, 2004 were $153 billion, an increase of $22 billion or 17 per cent from the previous year."
Mr. Clarke explained that this growth was achieved through increased loan business, enhanced management of credit risk and growth of the deposit base. The end result was a corresponding growth in earnings. "Loan growth is the major contributor to the growth in assets with a year over year growth of $7 billion. Also, we continue to carefully manage our credit risk, and as a result we experienced a reduction in non-performing loans as a percentage of total loans, moving from 2.2 per cent last year 1.95 per cent at the end of January. At the end of the quarter, our total loan loss provision stood at approximately $1.5 billion, which is $464 million in excess of non-performing loans. Deposits grew to $93 billion, up 13 per cent from the previous year, reflecting ongoing confidence in Scotiabank."
The result? They also strengthened their "capital through solid growth in earnings with total stockholders equity growing to $18.3 billion at the end of January." And Scotiabank has decided to share the wealth with its shareholders. Stated Mr. Clarke, "Yesterday we announced an interim dividend of 40 cents per stock unit. Scotiabank is very proud that we have continuously paid our shareholders a dividend since 1967."
Mr. Clarke then went through and outlined the current state of
each BNS subsidiary.
Scotia Jamaica Life Insurance Company (SJLIC)
Celebrating its fifth anniversary
in June 2003, the company had the following results:
Net profit of $896 million for the
year ending December 31, 2003
SJLIC accounts for 13
per cent of the BNS group net income Scotia Jamaica Building Society (SJBS)
Profits after taxes of $312 million,
a 57 per cent increase over 2002.
Mortgage portfolio grew
by 23 per cent
Launched ScotiaGrow in 2003, a long-term
savings plan.
Scotia Jamaica Investment Management Limited (SJML)
Profit after taxes were $218 million,
a 76 per cent increase over 2002.
Scotia Jamaica General Insurance Brokers Limited (SJGIB)
Reported gross premium written of
$461.5 million
Mr. Clarke made it clear that the bank would not rest on its
laurels. In regards to the coming year, he stated, "In 2004 we will undergo
our most significant change in technology in six years, when we re-engineer
our front office operation, with the introduction of a new information processing
network in our branches. This will provide major improvement in systems performance
to boost our service delivery capability." Several advancements that customers
will enjoy are:
A smoother process for validating
customers' identity
Greater efficiency with counter transaction
processing
Higher systems availability for counter
services
Real time evaluation of retail loan
applications, resulting in great improvement in turn-around time for approval
and disbursement of loans
Faster retrieval of historical retail
loan application data
Savings in operating cost for branch
transactions
"We will see the growth in the presence of Web/Internet based
back-office applications, with the relevant staff members having ready touch-key
access to customer information, bank policies, standards, corporate and human
resources information."
In terms of BNS's contribution to the wider society, 2004 will
be highlighted by projects concerning national health. Explains Mr. Clarke,
"We have identified the land for the building of a maternity and childcare facility
in the South Camp Road area, and this will be primarily for the women and children
of downtown Kingston.
"We hope to open the expanded Scotiabank Centen-nial Accident
and Emergency Unit at the University Hospital of the West Indies, later this
year. We are donating $32 million to this project to provide additional space
to house several consultant physicians and nurses."
Mr. Clarke concluded, "2004 marks the 115th anniversary of the
Bank of Nova Scotia in Jamaica. We have grown with this nation through many
crucial periods of its development and at every phase we have been there to
support national development, community growth and individual advancement."Mr. Clarke then went through and outlined the current state of
each BNS subsidiary.
