Bank of Ireland H1 profits more than double to €743m

He said: “Well our policy on this has been consistent since earlier this year, we’ve focussed on fixed rates”. Bad-loan charges declined 62 percent to 168 million euros and the bank gained 171 million euros from the sale of treasuries.

The head of Bank of Ireland Richie Boucher has refused to be drawn on whether the bank plans to bring down their variable mortgage rates. The bank said expects the impairment charge to remain at broadly similar levels during the second half.

“We have grown our new lending by 50% and we continue to be the largest lender to the Irish economy”. Ireland’s economy expanded 1.4 percent in the first quarter, helped by growth in exports and consumer spending, the central statistics office said on Thursday.

The common equity tier 1 ratio, a measure of a bank’s financial strength, excluding 2009 preference stock, stood at 11.1%, a rise of 180 basis points. This was driven by earnings in the first half and a narrowing of the group’s pension deficit.

“The non-interest income beat is welcome, but will be overshadowed by the weaker-than-anticipated NIM progression”, said Eamonn Hughes, an analyst at Goodbody Stockbrokers.

The volume of defaulted loans reduced by €1 billion year-on-year to €13.3 billion. The bank’s 6.5 billion euros of gross new lending was outstripped by 6.9 billion euros of loan repayments by customers.

The bank, which was the only domestic lender to avoid falling under state control after the country’s 2008 financial crisis, reported on Friday an underlying pretax profit of 743 million euros in the first six months of the year, up from 327 million euros in the same period of 2014.