Banks, Deposits, Financial Services, Latvia

In December, the banking sector suffered a EUR 0.879 million loss.

FCMC spokeswoman Agnese Licite told LETA that ten Latvian banks and four branches of foreign banks made profit in 2017. Their aggregate share in the banking sector’s assets was roughly 92.3%.

At the end of 2017, the banks had EUR 28.397 billion in aggregate assets, down 3.7% from the end of 2016. From the end of November, the banks’ aggregate assets had grown by 0.03% at the end of December.

Deposits with the Latvian banks dropped 5.1% year-on-year to EUR 20.267 billion at the end of last year. Over the month, aggregate bank deposits rose 0.6%.

Licite noted that resident deposits rose somewhat in December as households increased their deposits by 3.2%, nonfinancial institutions’ deposits grew 1.4% and government deposits contracted 15.6%. Nonresident deposits rose 1.1% in December.

The banking sector’s aggregate loan portfolio decreased 4.6% from the end of 2016 to EUR 14.44 billion at the end of 2017. Compared to the end of November, the loan portfolio shed 0.9%.

Licite said that in December the resident loan portfolio was down 0.5%, as corporate loans declined by 0.3% and household loans by 0.6%. The portfolio of nonresident loans dropped 3.8%.

In 2016, the Latvian banking sector showed an aggregate profit of EUR 453.754.