OTP Bank Romania reports 39 million RON profit for the first nine months of 2020

OTP Bank Romania announces an after tax profit of 39 million RON during the first nine months of the year, lower than the result of the the same period last year, due to higher expected risk costs in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of the provisions to cover these risks have been in place since the first quarter of the year.

“Given the pandemic situation, we chose at the end of the first quarter to move forward with what we started in 2019, the Apollo organic development strategy. We keep investing, we hired 200 new colleagues this year and have developed new services, such as fully online account opening for new customers, but we also take into account the current risks. Therefore, we have allocated resources to cover the potential risk, which will ultimately be reflected in the profitability parameter, in order to be able to perform in the market and finance the local economy”, said Gyula Fatér, CEO OTP Bank Romania.

Operating profit of the first nine months of the year reached RON 136 million, following the increase of 11% in total income, compared to the same time frame of last year; at the same time, operating expenses grew by 19% y-o-y, stemmed from higher IT expenses, as a result of the concentrated efforts for the digitalization of the services, as well as an increase in personnel expenses; most the latter was caused by the overall wage inflation, as well as a 16% y-o-y surge in the average number of employees.

The performing loan volumes increased by 16% y-o-y, supported by the demand increase for real estate loans, the need for financing from local SMEs, to whose financing the IMM Invest program has massively contributed, and corporate, which increased by 10% from year to year.