MUMBAI : Global banking major HSBC on Monday said its India operations reported a profit before tax of $561 million in the first six months of 2020, up 9.5% from the same period last year.
India wthe bank’s third-largest contributor to the profit of HSBC Holdings Plc, after Hong Kong at $5,092 million and Mainland China at $1,497 million in the six months to June. For the half year ended 31 December, HSBC’s India operations made a pre-tax profit of $494 million.
“We maintained a high level of business continuity with 85% of colleagues equipped to work from home, all of our customer contact centres fully operational, and between 70% and 90% of our branches open for business in the first half," said Noel Quinn, group chief executive, HSBC Holdings Plc.
Quinn said that for its personal lending customers, the bank has granted more than 700,000 payment holidays on loans, credit cards and mortgages, providing more than $27 billion in customer relief in the first half of the year.
“For our wholesale lending customers, we provided more than $52 billion of facilities to more than 172,000 customers globally over the same period, both through government schemes and our own relief initiatives," he said.
Globally, the bank’s reported profit after tax of $3.1 billion down 69% and reported profit before tax of $4.3 billion down 65%, owing to higher expected credit loss (ECL) and lower revenue. Reported profit in H1 2020 also included a $1.2 billion impairment of software intangibles, mainly in Europe, it said.
The net interest margin (NIM) of 1.43% in H1 2020 was down 18 basis points (bps) from H1 2019, primarily reflecting the initial impact of the reduction in interest rates due to the covid-19 outbreak, HSBC said.
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