This was the best first quarter of the last years considering that banks in Romania reported a profit of RON1.89 billion in the first quarter of 2021, of RON1.65 billion in the first quarter of 2020 and of RON1.8 billion in the first quarter of 2019.
Private lending in Romania grew by 15.8% in nominal terms (1.8% in real terms) to RON339 billion in April 2022 compared to April 2021, as local currency lending increased by 19.6% (5.1% in real terms) and foreign currency lending by 6.8% when expressed in lei (6.3% when expressed in euros), as per central bank data. Romania’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6.5% in real terms (in unadjusted data) in the first quarter of 2022 as compared to the same quarter of 2021, in line with data from the country’s statistics board INS.
The return on assets (ROA) and the return on equity (ROE) stood at 1.22% and 12.87%, respectively, at the end of the first quarter of 2022, slightly lower than the level reported in the same period of 2021.
The overall profit of Romania’s three biggest banks, Banca Transilvania, BCR and BRD, respectively, exceeded RON1 billion in January-March 2022, accounting for half of the entire profit of the banking system.
Banca Transilvania, the largest bank in Romania by assets, had a net profit of RON307.5 million in the first quarter of 2022, down 47% on the year. BCR Group, which includes the second largest bank in Romania, reported a net profit of RON477.5 million, up 12.5% versus the first quarter of 2021, and BRD-SocGen, the third largest bank in Romania by assets, had a net profit of RON246 million in the first quarter of 2022, up 12.6% on the year.
The Romanian banking system reported a record net profit of RON8.3 billion for the whole of 2021 in line with central bank data, up 66% versus 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic.