RBS doubles profit to £1.62bn

The bank revealed its overall provisioning requirement under the IFRS 9 accounting standard had increased by £616m – a 16 percent increase relative to IAS 39.

The main driver of the increase was the requirement to hold a minimum of 12 months of expected credit losses on performing assets, increasing to lifetime loss for assets that have exhibited a significant increase in credit risk.

Mortgage forbearance flow for the group in 2018 was £677m, against a mortgage forbearance stock of £3.9bn.

Customers had £3.5bn on revolving credit risk facilities in 2018, down from £3.6bn the year before.

In October, RBS paid its first dividend to shareholders since its bailout. In its latest results, the bank announced a final dividend of 3.5p per share, and also a 7.5p special dividend, which means the Treasury is set to receive £977m.

While the government is still RBS’s main shareholder, it also has about 190,000 private investors.

The government has been selling off blocks of shares it owns in the bank, and aims to have sold all of its stake by 2024.

But it realises a loss every time it does this as it paid 502p a share and they have not yet returned to that level. RBS shares are currently trading at about 240p.