NIB announce profits boost

National Irish Bank today reported profits of €38.1m before tax, goodwill and integration costs for the 12 months ended December 2006.

This represents an annualised increase of 27%. Profit before tax amounted to €3.5 million after the goodwill and migration costs associated with the substantial investment in the bank's relaunch and the completion of its migration to the Danske Bank Group technology platform.

The performance represented a return to profit that was ahead of expectations.

New lending volumes were very strong, with the overall loan book increasing by 51% to €6.9bn.

Lending volumes have now doubled since the Danske purchase was completed in February 2005.

Personal lending increased by 52% year on year with mortgage volumes increasing by 54%, assisted by the successful launch of the LTV Mortgage in October.

In the first 8 weeks of the campaign over €500m of mortgage applications were processed – this represented 20% of the Bank's end of year mortgage book. Lending to businesses increased by over 50% and both business and mortgage lending were significantly ahead of market growth.

Customer deposits amounted to €2.9bn, increasing at an underlying rate of 27% with very strong retention of maturing SSIA funds. This strong performance exceeded market growth and was assisted by the launch of highly competitive lump sum and regular saver product options.

Reflecting the strong balance sheet growth, income for the year amounted to €150M, an annualised increase of 23%.

Commenting on the year end results Andrew Healy, CEO, National Irish Bank said: "During 2006 National Irish Bank completed one of the largest change programmes in Irish banking. We re-launched our brand in April and introduced our 'new thinking in banking' philosophy.

"Since then we have brought a range of new and highly competitive products to the business and consumer markets. I am very pleased and greatly encouraged by the levels of new business we are receiving from customers of other banks."