Bigbank posts Q3 profit of 6.2 million euros
Bigbank AS earned a profit of 6.2 million euros in Q3 2020, which is 12% more than in the same period last year and 35% more than in Q2 this year.
“The great results for Q3 show we made the right choices at the start of the crisis, since our sales volumes have grown, outstripping the results for Q2 by 38% and those for Q3 2019 by 20%,” explained Martin Länts, the chairman of the management board of Bigbank.
“Right back at the beginning of the pandemic we decided to focus first and foremost on supporting our clients by continuing to offer them financing options, because where loans are concerned, you can’t just turn the tap off completely the moment things get critical,” he said. “We came up with personalised solutions for clients who were facing payment difficulties. Beyond that, our target was restoring our growth ambitions and launching new products.”
Bigbank began offering leasing to business clients in Estonia and Lithuania in Q2 and entered the home loan market in Estonia in Q3. In addition to ordinary home loans with annuity schedules, Bigbank also introduced a new type of home loan with a special schedule that allows payment of the main part of the loan to be postponed for up to 20 years, with only the interest on the loan being payable in the first few years.
“There’s been a lot of interest in the home loan, and the feedback we’ve gotten so far has been overwhelmingly positive,” Länts said. “Clients have also shown a great deal of interest in the savings deposit we’ve been offering on cross-border markets since Q2, whose share in the total value of all our deposits has grown really quickly, reaching 7% by the end of Q3.”
Bigbank’s capitalisation indicators remain good: its equity has grown this year by 7% and currently stands at 150.5 million euros, while its volume of assets at the end of Q3 was 720.9 million euros – an increase of 7% or 47.4 million euros over the quarter.
The group had a total of 113,000 loan agreements at the end of Q3: 35,000 in Lithuania; 33,000 in Latvia; 25,000 in Estonia; 11,000 in Finland; and 9000 in Sweden. At present, Bigbank has 378 employees: 228 in Estonia; 66 in Lithuania; 63 in Latvia; 15 in Finland; and six in Sweden.
After Q3 came to a close, Bigbank obtained permits from both the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority and the Central Bank of Bulgaria to establish and operate a subsidiary. This branch was entered in the Bulgarian Commercial Register on 19 November 2020. Operations are planned to be launched in the country early in the new year.