{"id":470950,"date":"2021-02-25T10:01:43","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T08:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=470950"},"modified":"2021-02-25T10:01:43","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T08:01:43","slug":"discovery-bank-reports-pleasing-progress-in-difficult-trading-period","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/470950\/discovery-bank-reports-pleasing-progress-in-difficult-trading-period\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovery Bank reports &#8216;pleasing progress&#8217; in difficult trading period"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Discovery Bank continues to grow its weekly average new-to-bank clients, the group said in a trading statement for the six months ended December 2020.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Discovery Bank made pleasing progress over the period, growing to over 287,000 clients with more than 540,000 accounts, with weekly average new-to-bank clients<br \/>\ncontinuing to grow,&#8221; it said on Thursday (25 February).<\/p>\n<p>Retail deposits reached R5.7 billion, as at 31 December 2020, with advances more stable at R3.8 billion reflecting the conservative lending strategy, resulting in a 69% lower arrears rate compared with the market, it said.<\/p>\n<p>The group said that following the successful completion of its accounts migration process, where it moved over FNB Discovery Card clients to its platform, just over half (53%), have upgraded to Discovery Bank.<\/p>\n<p>Following early teething problems, the group said that the IT systems are managing the growing customer and transactional volumes well and proved very stable over the 2020 year-end period, maintaining a systems uptime of &gt;99.9%.<\/p>\n<p>Discovery said that normalised operating profit for the group increased by 19% to R4.5 billion, for the six months ended December 2020, while normalised headline earnings decreased by 1% to R2.3 billion and total new business was up 8% to R10.9 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Investment in new initiatives was at 22% of earnings, compared with 26% in the previous period. Discovery Bank reported a loss of R611 million for the period under review, down from R530 million it lost in the prior period.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, Discovery Group achieved the following results for the six months ended December 2020:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Normalised profit from operations increased 19% to R4.5 billion<\/li>\n<li>Profit for the period decreased 10% to R1.9 billion<\/li>\n<li>Gross income of the group increased 9% to R34.9 billion<\/li>\n<li>Headline earnings per share decreased 10% to 280.3 cents per share<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Due to the uncertain and potentially volatile economic environment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Discovery has not declared an interim ordinary share dividend. The reintroduction of dividends will be considered when appropriate, it said.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Discovery Health reported a 6% increase in normalised profit to R1.67 billion<\/li>\n<li>Discovery Life was up 3% to R1.9 billion<\/li>\n<li>Discovery Invest declined 3% to R471 million<\/li>\n<li>VitalityHealth was up 24% to R613\u00a0 million<\/li>\n<li>VitalityLife was up 206% to R327 million<\/li>\n<li>Discovery Insure was up 43% to R107 million<\/li>\n<li>Vitality Group was up 116% to R238 million.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Discovery said that its business model &#8220;has proven to be highly relevant&#8221; during the Covid-19 pandemic and the trends that are are likely to accentuate this relevance in a post<br \/>\nCovid world.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The group is confident in its ability to capitalise on these emerging opportunities,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, Discovery&#8217;s earnings per share (basic) and headline earnings per share (basic), for the period ending June 2021, are expected to be at least 20% higher (17.8 cents and 54.0 cents, respectively) than that reported for the year ended June 2020, it said.<\/p>\n<p><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Discovery-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-470982\" src=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Discovery-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"776\" height=\"467\" srcset=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Discovery-1.png 776w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Discovery-1-300x181.png 300w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Discovery-1-768x462.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 776px) 100vw, 776px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/468026\/business-talk-in-conversation-with-discovery-bank-ceo-hylton-kallner\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Business Talk \u2013 In conversation with Discovery Bank CEO Hylton Kallner<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Discovery Bank continues to grow its weekly average new-to-bank clients, the group said in a trading statement for the six months ended December 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":284182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[4883,26],"class_list":["post-470950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-discovery","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470950"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471026,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470950\/revisions\/471026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}