CECA's member entities as a whole obtained attributable profit of €1.766 billion in the first half of 2021, compared with €762 million the previous financial year. This return, which takes place in a context of economic recovery following the strong impact of the pandemic, does not take into account the extraordinary result derived from the CaixaBank-Bankia merger, which would raise the amount to €4.669 billion.
In terms of revenues, net interest income declined 1.3% due to the impact of the fall in the Euribor on mortgage lending, as well as changes in the structure of the portfolio, with a greater weight of ICO loans and lower revenues from consumer loans and fixed-income.
The upturn in business activity has led to an increase in fee income (7.4%), as well as in the results of investees (65.6%) and in dividend income (44.7%), although this improvement did not offset the decline in net interest income, in the result on financial operations and operating profit, which last year recorded non-recurring income.
On the expenditure side, the containment and restructuring efforts undertaken by the institutions led to a slight reduction in operating expenses, excluding the extraordinary costs associated with the merger.
Lower impairment losses in the first half of the year (€1.46 billion less than in the first half of 2020) led to an improvement in results and raised the return on equity (ROE) to 6%, compared to 1.4% in the previous year.
Despite the economic context, the doubtful loans ratio remained contained at 3.8% in June, which is 0.23 percentage points lower than in the same month of the previous year.
Furthermore, the sector's banks reinforced their solvency by reaching a CET1 ratio of 13.9% on average in June 2021, an improvement of 0.21 percentage points compared to the ratio reported in June 2020 and comfortably exceeding the minimum capital requirements demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB).