Oversea-Chinese Banking First Quarter Profit Rises 13.7%

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. Ltd. (O39.SG) on Tuesday reported a 13.7% on year rise in its net profit in the first quarter, driven by an increase in wealth management income and higher profit from its insurance business.

Net profit in the March quarter was 973 million Singapore dollars (US$692.2 million), compared with S$856 million in the same period last year, Singapore's second-biggest bank by assets said in a regulatory filing.

Net interest income fell 3.1% on year to S$1.27 billion, but noninterest income jumped 30% to S$977 million, OCBC said. Fee and commission income also jumped 29% on year to S$481 million, led by a 70% rise in wealth-management fee income after OCBC acquired the wealth-management business of Barclays PLC in Singapore and Hong Kong in November 2016.

Wealth management contributed 32% of the bank's total income in the first quarter, compared with 23% last year.

The bank scaled back specific allowances from the previous quarter, and its ratio of bad loans was unchanged on quarter at 1.3%. In the same quarter of last year, the nonperforming loans ratio was 1.0% of total loans.

Write to Gaurav Raghuvanshi at gaurav.raghuvanshi@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 08, 2017 20:10 ET (00:10 GMT)