RBS slashes NPLs by 76 percent in four years

The bank posted its results statement for the first half of this year, which showed the number of NPLs it holds has reduced from £39.4bn, at the end of December 2013, to £9.3bn for the first half of this year.

The statement also shows the bank has reported an attributable profit of £939m for the first half of this year, compared to a loss of around £2bn for the same period last year.

RBS said that on a whole its costs are down and income is up, with legacy issues making good progress.

As for the legacy issues, the bank has reduced the level of its litigation and conduct costs from £1.3bn, for the first half of last year, to £396m this year.

This year’s costs included a £151m charge in respect of the settlement with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (mis-selling of mortgages in the US) and a £25m charge relating to the settlement of the UK 2008 rights issue shareholder litigation.

The statement also showed figures for personal lending in the UK. RBS supplied £144bn worth of mortgage loans and £13.7bn of unsecured lending to customers for the first half of 2017.

However, the bank wrote off £11m of mortgage loans and £217m of unsecured loans in the same period.

The amount of forbearance recorded in the bank’s UK personal and business banking division hit £219m for the number of portfolios in three months of arrears and £302m for portfolios in arrears of up to three months.

Nearly 40 percent (37) of the bank’s income came from the UK personal banking division and 28 percent from commercial banking.

The remainder of the bank’s income was split between UK business banking, private banking, NatWest markets, RBS International’s Corporate Banking and Ulster Bank.

RBS said it’s on track to meet it’s 2020 targets to deliver a cost base of £6.4bn, a 12 percent positive return on tangible equity and an income to cost ratio of sub-50 percent.