Accessibility options


RBS profits beat forecasts

RBS profits beat forecasts



The Royal Bank of Scotland has reported record profits and reassured investors it continues to avoid the damaging level of bad debts that have hurt its rivals.

Operating profits rose 14% in 2006 to £9.4bn, ahead of analysts forecasts. RBS also told investors it would raise its full-year dividend by a quarter to 90.6p.

Chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin said his group was continuing to manage a trade-off between "sustainable growth, risk and return".

"We are expanding our reach and making progress in all the major economies we operate in. We face the future confidently, with momentum and a proven strategy for success," he said.

The Edinburgh-based bank has managed to avoid many of the pitfalls of bad debt that have harmed its rivals as growing numbers of customers apply for individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs) to protect themselves from creditors. RBS stressed again today the benefits of having avoided lending to the "sub-prime" sector - those who are not traditionally targeted by banks.

Advertisement starts



Advertisement ends

"We have retained our inherently cautious stance towards higher risk activities such as unsecured consumer lending and sub-prime credit markets more generally," said Sir Fred. The bank said it had grown average customer lending by 14% while impairment losses have increased by 10%.

The insurance division of RBS, which owns Direct Line and Churchill in the UK, posted a 3% rise in operating profit to £750m. It said a rising price trend for UK car insurance emerged towards the end of last year and it had successfully put through its own increases to reflect that, athough they will take some time to feed through into income.

Its corporate banking division - one of the biggest arrangers of loans for major businesses - had another strong year. At the US operation, Citizens, RBS said it continues "to see opportunities to develop our footprint through supermarket banking".

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

Advertisement starts



Advertisement ends

a high street scene

Consumer news

Get the latest on consumer issues and trends - from property, rip-offs and pensions to fraud, political angles and rising prices

Features and analysis

Top quality stories and analysis of the burning money issues of the day - get the bigger picture
Share prices
Shares news
Keep bang up-to-date with the latest news affecting share prices and the stockmarket
Family

Free guides and brochures

There's a whole range of useful information to choose from including investing, retirement and family finances
Skip to page content | Text onlyGraphical version of this page

Tiscali Quicklinks. Please visit our Accessibility Page for a list of the Access Keys you can use to find your way around the site, skip directly to the main navigation, to the page content, or to more links within money.

web |  shopping |  this site |  video |  local services

Page Footer


Access keys


You will need to use different key combinations in order to use access keys depending on your internet browser, find out which on our accessibility page.
  • (0) Navigate to Accessibility page.
  • (1) Navigate to Home page.
  • (2) Navigate to My email.
  • (3) Navigate to My Account.
  • (4) Navigate to Site Map page.
  • (5) Navigate to Contact us page.
  • (6) Navigate to Members channel.
  • (7) Navigate to Services channel.
  • (8) Navigate to News & Info channel.
  • (9) Navigate to Entertainment channel.
  • ([) Skip down to the Primary navigation block.
  • (]) Skip down to the more links within this section block.
  • (=) Bypass all navigation and jump to the content.
  • (x) Text only version of this page.
Background images used:
furniture images used in the site icons used in the site images used in the header