Singapore's Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp reported an 11% rise in quarterly profit on Friday that beat market estimates, driven by broad-based growth, while net interest income grew 8% to record levels.
The city-state's second-biggest listed lender's net profit came in at S$1.23 billion ($901.5 million) versus S$1.11 billion a year earlier, and compared with the S$1.16 billion average estimate of five analysts, according to data from Refinitiv.
OCBC, the last domestic bank to report results, reported a big rise in allowances for impaired loans to S$231 million from S$13 million in allowances a year earlier.
"Given the structural changes taking place in the offshore oil industry and continued absence of visible recovery in this sector, a prudent decision was made to substantially reduce collateral valuations further, to the extent of writing down vessels pending employment to scrap value," OCBC said in a statement.