MeDirect Bank announced a profit after tax of €10.1 million for the six months ended June 30. While achieving these results, MeDirect continued to launch new products, grew its customer franchise and further expanded its specialised lending platform.
These accomplishments were facilitated through MeDirect’s investment in technology, which is producing tangible results for the bank and its customers, the bank said.
Expanding the range of products
During the first half of 2023, MeDirect launched a range of new products. Among others, it launched its MeManaged product in Belgium, an online discretionary management service with portfolio management provided by MeDirect, using fund products managed by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. In Malta, MeDirect began to offer its MeMax instant savings account, as well as a new property loan product for clients purchasing real estate as an investment.
Growing the retail franchise
MeDirect’s retail franchise, focused on affluent customers, grew by 8% over the past 12 months to more than 114,000 retail clients, of whom 41,000 are wealth clients. The number of wealth clients increased by 12% over the past 12 months, and total client financial assets increased by 4.5% year over year, reaching €4.5 billion notwithstanding very challenging market and macroeconomic conditions, such as the COVID pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and severe supply chain disruption.
Specialised lending platform
MeDirect continued to grow its specialised lending platform, focusing on mortgages in Belgium, the Netherlands and Malta. Over the past 12 months, MeDirect’s mortgage portfolio grew from €1.7 billion to €2.2 billion, an increase of more than 30%, with investment across a variety of mortgage asset classes.
On the Maltese corporate lending side, the bank continues to extend carefully selected, well-collateralised loans to support the Maltese economy, with a portfolio of €128 million as at June 30, 2023.
MeDirect also further reduced its on-balance sheet exposure to international corporate loans over the past 12 months by 25%, to less than 10% of total assets (from €593 million to €446 million).
Sustainable profitability
Profit after tax for the six months ended June 30, 2023 amounted to €10.1 million, compared to €0.5 million for the first six months of 2022. Net interest income increased by 36% compared with the same period last year, from €28.7 million to €39.1 million. The group’s non-performing Loan ratio was reduced to 2.0% at June 30, 2023, from 4.6% at June 30, 2022.
At June 30, 2023, taking into consideration the interim profits, MeDirect’s Tier 1 capital ratio stood at 16.2%, with a total capital ratio of 19.8%. At the same date, the group’s liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) stood at 215% and its net stable funding ratio (NSFR) at 116%. All such ratios were well above regulatory requirements.
More information, including the interim financial statements, is available at https://www.medirect.com.mt/about-us/investor-relations/.