Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland has generated a profit before tax of £59m for the 12 months to the end of December 2017.
Richard Donnan, Head of Northern Ireland, Ulster Bank, commented on the results:
“These results show the way in which we have been changing and improving our organisation to become a simpler, safer and more customer focussed bank. We are a leading supporter of business and personal customers across Northern Ireland.
“Our business in Northern Ireland continues to show a strong performance of £59m, with a profit driven by positive underlying performance across all areas of our business and significantly reduced impairment writebacks. Lending drawdowns by small businesses were up 29% in the year, we started 40,000 new personal banking relationships and we have retained the largest share of the personal and business current account market in Northern Ireland.
“Customers continue to change the way they bank with us. Our focus on cost is an important part of our ability to reinvest in the development of our people and digital services that make it simpler and easier for customer to bank with us. Our digitally active customer base grew by 21% year on year. We are continuing to respond to that change: for example, by introducing Community Bankers, Business Growth Enablers, dedicated Tech Xperts in our branches and 17 stops for our Bank on Wheels. Throughout this, our ambition remains the same. We want to be the number one bank for customer service, trust and advocacy for all business and personal customers - for the entrepreneur, the homeowner, the farmer and the business owner.
“While the broader economic climate may contain uncertainty, we believe we have robust policies in place to finance good deals and play a leading part in local growth, having financed significant investments in hospitality, healthcare and food manufacturing – increasing new lending to large businesses by 15% and growing that book by 6%.
“We have been a part of the fabric of Northern Ireland since 1836 and we continue to invest in unique and exclusive services that meet the needs of customers however they choose to bank with us, whether that is through a paperless mortgage process, providing a Financial Health Check that helped 31,000 customers become financially fitter, through Get Cash which enables customers to withdraw money from one of our ATMs without a debit card, or SignVideo, a new service for deaf customers allowing them to access a third-party interpreter to assist in branch or telephone banking.”
