LONDON: Bank of Ireland (BIR.DB) Friday reported an 82% rise in first-half pretax profit after booking much lower impairment charges, and said its U.K. mortgage business has returned to growth.
The bank added that it continues to be confident in the group’s prospects.
The common equity tier 1 ratio, a measure of a bank’s financial strength, excluding 2009 preference stock, stood at 11.1%, a rise of 180 basis points. The rise in capital ratios reflects profits earned during the period and a reduction in the company’s pension deficit.
For the half year ended June 30, the Bank made a pretax profit of 725 million euros ($802.05 million), compared with EUR399 million a year earlier on net interest income of EUR1.22 billion and EUR1.16 billion respectively.
It booked EUR168 million of impairment charges in the period, down from EUR444 million for the half year ended June 30, 2014, with reductions across all asset classes. The bank said expects the impairment charge to remain at broadly similar levels during the second half.
Stripping out non-core items, the underlying profit for the period was EUR743 million, compared with EUR327 million.
U.K. mortgage business new lending rose to 1.3 billion pounds ($2.03 billion) in the period, from GBP0.6 billion in the first half of 2014.
