Bank profits fell 32% until April

The Financial Superintendency said that banks recorded profits of $2.5 trillion at the end of April, a figure that represented a 32% drop compared to that reported at the end of the same month of 2023, when these had been $3.7 trillion.

The total of credit establishments reported profits of $2.5 trillion, an amount 41% lower than that registered in April 2023, a period in which these amounted to $4.3 trillion.

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Disaggregating by type of entity among credit establishments, of which banks are a part, financial corporations earned $173.7 billion, financing companies lost $129.3 billion, and financial cooperatives recorded profits of just $2.9 billion.

At the end of April, the assets of the financial system (own and third parties) reached $2,987 trillion, with a real annual variation of 0.3% and a nominal variation of 7.7%. Of this value, $1,447 billion (48.5% of the total) correspond to the supervised entities’ own resources, while the remainder are third-party resources, including assets in custody. Trust companies are the main asset manager of the financial system with $990 billion, that is, 64.3% of third-party resources and 33.1% of the system’s total assets, of which $295 billion corresponded to the securities custody activity. The ratio of total assets to GDP was 188.3%.

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The gross balance of the credit portfolio amounted to $686.4 billion and the depth indicator stood at 43.3% of GDP. In accordance with the credit cycle, the portfolio completed 13 months with negative real annual variations and registered a 5.6% drop in the gross balance in April, which reflects the negative real annual contribution of the consumer and commercial modalities with negative figures of 10.7% and 5.2% respectively, which could not be neutralized by the positive variation in microcredit and housing; the correction of the inflation effect to the extent that the nominal growth rate (1.2%) is higher than the real variation; and the dynamics of penalties that in April totaled $2 billion, mainly influenced by consumption patterns with a participation of 87.5% and microcredit of 6.4%.

The balance reporting arrears of more than 30 days reached $36 billion, which meant a month-on-month increase in the balance of $513,000 million. In particular, compared to April 2023, the balance increased at a real annual rate of 8.6%, driven by the default of the microcredit modalities it registers; 56.7% decreasing compared to the previous month; housing that registers nine months with positive variations up to 21.4% in the month; commercial that decreased compared to the previous month with a record of 8.7% and consumption that grew 2.4% real annually.

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The portfolio quality indicator due to arrears for the total portfolio, calculated as the relationship between the overdue balance (greater than 30 days) and the gross balance, was 5.24%. In April 2023 the indicator had been 4.6%.

Until April there were 11 banking houses with negative net results.

HOLMAN RODRÍGUEZ MARTÍNEZ