Standard Chartered Bank registered a strong growth for the third quarter of this year, as profit increased by 69% year-on-year to reach ¢344 million, according to its 2020 quarter three unaudited financial statement.

The tier-one bank recorded outstanding growth in all income lines, despite the covid-19 pandemic.

Whilst interest income jumped from ¢423 million in September 2019 to ¢500 million in September this year, the trading income also grew by 40% to ¢168 million in the nine months of this year.

It’s one of the most efficient banks in the country today as cost-to-income ratio-that is the measurement of costs in relation to earnings-was 33% during the period, far below industry average.

Shareholders of the bank will be smiling as earnings per share hit ¢2.54 as against ¢1.49 a year ago.

In terms of the balance sheet, Stanchart balance sheet size was strong, hitting ¢15.3 billion.

Customers’ deposits was virtually unchanged at ¢5.8 billion at the end of September 2020. It stood at ¢5.7 billion the same period last year.

Loans and advances went up albeit slightly by 4% to ¢1.7 billion. That might indicate that the bank slowed down lending activities during the covid-19 epic period to prevent any potential loan loss/losses.

For the stability of the bank, Stanchart, on the other hand, registered a Capital Adequacy Ratio-a measurement of a bank’s available capital expressed as a percentage of a bank’s credit exposures-of 17.96% and an NPL less loan loss of 7.85% in the third quarter of this year.  Without loan loss, the NPL was 23.42%.