Banco Montepio moves from loses to a profit of €6.6M in 2021

Montepio bank made a profit of €6.6 million in 2021, which compares with a loss of €80.7 million in 2020, it told the market on Thursday.

According to the institution owned by Associação Mutualista Montepio Geral, if the costs of the staff reduction programme (which cut 243 workers in 2021) were excluded, the consolidated net profit would have been €21.8 million.

Last year, net interest income increased 0.3% to €243.5 million, while commissions rose 0.9% to €116.3 million.

On the expense side, operating costs were down 9.4% to €264.1 million, with personnel costs down 13.3% to €164.2 million.

The fall in the constitution of impairments contributed to the results, which fell 70.7% to €54.3 million.

Gross loans fell slightly (0.7%) to €12,272 million on the balance sheet.

Montepio said that “the vast majority of customers on moratoria have resumed the debt repayment as planned at the date of joining the moratorium and the credit risk of the portfolio that was covered by the moratorium has reduced significantly”.

At the end of 2021, he added, the total value of contracts that had already been subject to moratoria was €2.69 billion, with 88% in a normal situation.

As for the total loan portfolio, the ratio of non-performing exposures (NPE) was 8.6% at the end of 2021, down from 10.4% in 2020, with the bank noting that “the sale of a portfolio of non-performing loans and the measures that have been implemented in the area of credit recovery had a favourable impact on this evolution”.

Deposits rose 2.3% to €12,78 billion and, according to the bank, despite the context of historically low-interest rates, there was “an increase in demand deposits that contributed to the positive evolution of net interest income”.

Also in the results published today, Montepio reported that it had started the voluntary dissolution and liquidation of Banco Montepio Geral Cabo Verde.