Oversea-Chinese Banking 2Q Profit Rises 22% On Year

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. Ltd. (O39.SG) on Thursday reported 22% on-year growth in its second quarter net profit, helped by strong growth in its banking, wealth management and insurance businesses.

Net profit in the April-to-June quarter was 1.08 billion Singapore dollars (US$796 million), compared with S$885 million in the same period last year, the Singapore bank said in a statement.

Net-interest income rose 7% on year to S$1.35 billion in the quarter, largely driven by strong lending growth across the bank's corporate and consumer businesses. Customer loans rose 11% from the previous year, OCBC said.

Net-interest margin for the quarter was 1.65%, compared with 1.68% a year before and up from 1.62% in the previous quarter, it said.

Noninterest income rose 34% on year to S$1.05 billion, while fees and commissions income climbed 18% to S$492 million. Wealth-management fee income rose 45% after OCBC bought the wealth and investment- management business of Barclays PLC in Singapore and Hong Kong in November.

OCBC said its nonperforming loans ratio rose to 1.3% as on June 30, from 1.1% in the previous year. The bad loans ratio, however, was unchanged from the first quarter of this year, it said.

Write to Gaurav Raghuvanshi at gaurav.raghuvanshi@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 26, 2017 19:47 ET (23:47 GMT)