On Friday 26 April 2019, the Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL) announced its financial results for the year 2018, recording a strong performance of all business lines with a 5% increase in net income after tax.
BIL reported that it performed well across its Retail & Digital Banking, Corporate & Institutional Banking, and Wealth & Investment Management business lines, with a net income after tax of €131 million, up 5% from 2017 (€124 million). Customer deposits similarly increased by 5.8% to €7.3 billion (compared to €16.3 billion in 2017), whilst customer loans increased by 5.2% to €13.4 billion.
These positive trends namely result from a stable core operating income from the commercial business lines of €500 million despite a challenging macroeconomic environment with low interest rates and the revaluation of investment properties resulting from an alignment of BIL’s accounting policies with those of its majority shareholder Legend Holdings. The latter generated a positive impact of €35 million on BIL’s accounts, compared with €10 million in 2017.
Whilst all business areas delivered a good performance in 2018, assets under management were impacted by negative market conditions, which increased by just 0.2% to €39.5 billion (compared to €39.4 billion in 2017). This increase resulted from new net inflows of €0.95 billion. However, this growth was dented by a negative market effect of €0.87 billion due to corrections in equity markets in the last quarter of 2018.
Outgoing CEO Hugues Delcourt commented: “We again delivered good results in 2018 despite challenging market conditions. Looking back at my time as CEO of BIL, I must say that I am very proud of what we have achieved as a team at the Bank over the last five years. I would like to thank the shareholders and the BIL employees for their support and commitment”.
Marcel Leyers, incoming CEO of BIL, added: “Going forward, even though global growth is currently slowing, market fundamentals remain strong and we generally retain a positive outlook on the macroeconomic environment. We will continue to invest in strategic areas and to foster innovation and we are confident that our performance will remain robust in the coming years.”
Luc Frieden, Chairman of the Board of Directors of BIL Group, concluded: “2018 was marked by the completion of the acquisition of Precision Capital’s majority stake in BIL by Legend Holdings. The combination of the two shareholders, the State of Luxembourg and Legend Holdings, is excellent for BIL and its clients, as it combines a strong and a stable anchoring in Luxembourg and Europe with the technological and international know how of Legend Holdings.”
