Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za The MAJOR banks experienced a sharp earnings recovery in the first half of 2021 from the depressed Covid-19 related trading conditions of the previous year, but recovery at the banks is still under way.
Headline earnings of the major banks, combined, increased a whopping 177 percent to R40.6 billion in the first six months of 2021, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC’s) Major Banks Analysis 2021, released on Friday, showed. The report highlights key themes from the results of Absa, FirstRand, Nedbank and Standard Bank.
The combined earnings figure however, was still 4.5 percent behind 2019 levels, as PwC’s analysis for 2019 showed the combined banks’ headline earnings at R42.49bn in that year.
The key driver of earnings growth in 2021 was sharply lower credit impairment charges across…