DBS Group Holdings, Southeast Asia’s biggest lender, posted a 12% rise in third-quarter net profit on Thursday, helped by a sharp drop in bad debt charges and double-digit growth in income from its core lending business.
DBS made a net profit of $856 million for July-September against a net profit of $762 million a year ago.
That compared with an average forecast of $795 million, according to five analysts surveyed by Reuters.
The profit figure was above the $810 million recorded in its second-quarter, helped by strong fee and commission income.
Bad debt charges dropped 76% in the third quarter of 2012 from a year earlier, when Singapore banks took more provisioning due to the worsening eurozone debt crisis.
Singapore’s banking sector faces a challenging outlook as new government measures to cool the property market will likely slow demand for mortgages, while low interest rates are expected to hit margins.
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