Lloyds reports ‘satisfactory’ growth in first half of the year |
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Tue, 21 Jun 2005 00:05
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Lloyds TSB has revealed that bad debts were on the rise with a number of its high street customers defaulting on repayments. But the bank was confident of reporting "satisfactory" profits in the first half of this year.
In a statement, the bank said that the rate of consumer lending is lower than that of previous years, "The rate of consumer lending growth in the first half of 2005 is ... expected to be slightly lower than the double-digit growth rates of recent years. A higher charge in retail banking, reflecting an increase in the number of customers experiencing repayment difficulties, is expected to be offset by a lower charge in the group's corporate lending portfolios," the statement said. This news is another nail in the UK debt conundrum with the debt crossing the £1 trillion mark.
| Lloyds admitted that though the company had made a greater provision to cover consumer bad debts, lower company debts would offset this. Lloyds added that it had also registered "meaningful gains" in business banking and corporate markets and its strong cost performance of recent years had been steady in the first half of the year.
Chief Executive Eric Daniels said, "We are continuing to make progress against our objective to deliver sustained earnings growth, despite signs of a slowing consumer environment in the UK." The bank said that its decision to concentrate on providing efficient service to its existing customers would result in healthy levels of lending and deposit growth. Lloyds had reported a 20 percent fall in pre-tax profits for a full year in March as compared to the previous year.
Lloyds boasts of around 15 million personal banking customers and operates in 27 countries across the world.
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