Asset levy drives down Scotiabank’s 6-month profit

Sco­tia­bank T&T Ltd has re­port­ed in­come af­ter tax­a­tion of $301 mil­lion for the six months end­ed April 2026, a de­crease of $39 mil­lion or 11 per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

In­come af­ter tax for the sec­ond quar­ter was $140 mil­lion, a de­crease of $20 mil­lion or 13 per cent com­pared to the per­for­mance in the pri­or quar­ter.

This re­duc­tion in prof­itabil­i­ty for both pe­ri­ods is main­ly due to the 0.25 per cent as­set levy on com­mer­cial bank, which was an­nounced in the 2026 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion and be­came ef­fec­tive on Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

The group con­tin­ues to post a com­pet­i­tive re­turn on eq­ui­ty (ROE) of 12.75 per cent and re­turn on as­sets (ROA) 1.94 per cent, while im­prov­ing the div­i­dend pay­out ra­tio to 82 per cent with a sec­ond quar­ter div­i­dend of 70 cents.

Com­ment­ing on the re­sults, Gayle Pa­zos, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sco­tia­bank T&T Ltd, said, “Our in­ter­im re­sults con­tin­ue to demon­strate strong prof­itabil­i­ty in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment. Our re­silience is tied to our strat­e­gy, as we con­tin­ue to pro­vide ad­vice-based prod­ucts and so­lu­tions while fur­ther sim­pli­fy­ing our cus­tomers’ jour­ney with us.

“Our per­for­mance from core op­er­a­tions con­tin­ues to im­prove, with a six per cent growth in re­tail loans to cus­tomers year on year, dri­ving four per cent growth in loan in­ter­est in­come.”

She added that tech­no­log­i­cal and ef­fi­cien­cy in­vest­ments con­tin­ue to en­hance cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships and en­gage­ment, with cus­tomer pri­ma­cy in­creas­ing to 22 per cent and dig­i­tal adop­tion at 59 per cent.

“Our in­sur­ance and wealth busi­ness lines con­tin­ue to de­liv­er strong growth, con­tribut­ing 21 per cent of over­all group net in­come, up from 18 per cent last year. This per­for­mance was sup­port­ed by five per cent growth in mu­tu­al funds and three per cent growth in in­sur­ance pol­i­cy­hold­er funds, fur­ther ad­vanc­ing our di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy,” Pa­zos fur­ther stat­ed.

Re­gard­ing group fi­nan­cial per­for­mance to­tal rev­enue, com­pris­ing of net in­ter­est in­come and oth­er in­come, was $1 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od end­ed April 2026, an in­crease of $13 mil­lion or one per cent over the pri­or year.

Net in­ter­est in­come for the pe­ri­od was $769 mil­lion, an in­crease of $15 mil­lion or two per cent.

In­ter­est in­come on loans to cus­tomers in­creased by $28 mil­lion or four per cent, with re­tail loan in­ter­est in­come grow­ing six per cent based pri­mar­i­ly on port­fo­lio growth over the pe­ri­od.

As at April 2026, oth­er in­come of $253 mil­lion de­creased by $2 mil­lion or one per cent re­sult­ing from low­er for­eign ex­change trad­ing rev­enues in line with in­dus­try chal­lenges and pre­vail­ing mar­ket con­di­tions.

Non-in­ter­est ex­pens­es for the pe­ri­od end­ed April 2026 was $482 mil­lion, high­er by $58 mil­lion or 14 per cent com­pared to pri­or year.

This in­crease was sub­stan­tial­ly dri­ven by the in­tro­duc­tion of the new reg­u­la­to­ry as­set tax.