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1st October 2011
Message from CEO Miles Roberts
Newsletter October 2011
Since the decision to change the structure of Raphaels and from my last update the Bank continues to be in a stable position whilst growing in invested areas. The Bank ended the last fiscal year with an £2.8m pre-tax profit and our operational success ensured a 22% growth in our assets. The Bank's Tier 1 ratio, a measure of our capital strength, has also improved to over 34%. This compares with figures typically in the 10 - 15% range for other Banks.
Graph: pre-tax profit 2006-2011
Graph: asset growth 2006-2011
We have wound down the current accounts for both private and business and the support we have had from our customers has been very positive and the migration of accounts has gone very smoothly. Whilst closing these accounts, we were able to focus our efforts on other areas of the business mainly in the B2B area such as Card Services where our programmes sees expansion and our ATMs estate has seen a steady increase.
Whilst the Bank continues to trade profitably overall, the investment it has made in areas such as Commercial Foreign Exchange is slowly but surely starting to pay off and allows us to offer a far more comprehensive service to customers and become a major player in the FX markets.
With the uncertainty of the Euro, the impact of Sovereign debt and the slower than expected growth of the UK economy, customers remain unsure about overseas trading. As the economic outlook stabilises and the world economy returns to growth our objective will be to ensure that Raphaels is the preferred provider within the foreign exchange and payments arena.
We are also pleased to announce that our foreign exchange portfolio now includes Travel Money. To date the service has been provided by our sister company, ICE (International Currency Exchange). By adding this to our fully regulated portfolio, customers have full peace of mind whilst benefiting from excellent online rates and home delivery.
A service that the bank has long enjoyed the success of is the raising of funds from fixed rate bonds and deposit accounts and we will continue in this area adding strength to the banks overall liquidity.
Consumer finance, the newest of the divisions to the overall banking portfolio has seen growth despite the instability of the consumer markets, which is encouraging and expect this to continue. The total loan book is now £37m and the division generated a profit of £0.75m.
As we focus our efforts on continued growth towards the end of the year, we are also outlining our objectives for 2012 and what that may bring not only with the changing face of the economy but also the Olympics. 2012 also sees the bank celebrating 225yrs of banking and we'll no doubt be sharing further successes with our customers.
Miles Roberts
CEO
October 2011
