Commercial banks are consistently making a large share of their profits from fees, including $152.6 million collected in 2025 from what they charged Barbadians.
After the commissions the banks themselves paid out, that fee income was $138.1 million.
These financial institutions are also receiving an income boost from millions of dollars in service charges paid by households and other depositors, which amounted to $367.9 million over the past decade.
Over the same ten years, the banks paid depositors $87.2 million in interest, leaving a net transfer from depositors to banks of $280.7 million.
Meanwhile, the interest they are paying on the billions of dollars customers have on deposit, which totalled $12.98 billion at the end of last year, has fallen sharply. Interest paid on savings deposits alone fell by $96.3 million between 2014 and 2025.
This is revealed in an aggregate income statement and balance sheet return of the commercial banking sector.
There are six commercial banks operating in Barbados – CIBC Caribbean Bank (Barbados) Ltd, First Citizens Bank (Barbados) Ltd, RBC Royal Bank (Barbados) Ltd, Republic Bank (Barbados) Ltd and Scotiabank (Barbados) Ltd, and Sagicor Bank (Barbados) Ltd which started in 2023.
The latest data shows that the combined $216 million pre-tax profit they earned in 2025, up from 2024’s $202.8 million, was significantly boosted by fees paid by customers.
According to the information, commercial banks’ fee and commission income of $152.6 million represented 20.3 per cent of operating income in 2025. Further, when commissions paid were excluded, fee income of $138.1 million equalled 64 per cent of the sector’s pre-tax profit last year.
Recent escalation in fees
The data also showed that fee income plus foreign exchange dealing was $238.9 million, thereby exceeding the pre-tax earnings.
Based on the commercial banks’ reported performance, fees have remained between 18 and 23 per cent of their operating income since 2012 and were slightly lower in 2025, $152.6 million, than in 2024 – $153.2 million.
There was, therefore, no indication of a recent escalation in fees, but the data confirmed persistently high earnings from this income category.
The combined commercial bank financials also illustrate how they are earning significantly more from holding deposits than their customers are in interest on savings.
Interest expense fell from 31.9 per cent of interest income in 2012 to 2.2 per cent in 2025, with net interest income sustained by the falling cost of deposits rather than by growth in lending income. Fee income was additional to this.
The combined income statement and balance sheet of the commercial banks indicates that until 2015, banks paid depositors far more in interest than they collected in deposit service charges.
The cumulative net transfer from depositors to banks over the ten-year period ending last year, based on the financials is $280.7 million. In 2025 alone depositors paid $26.5 million more than they received.
This trend has been in train since 2016, dating back to a change in the minimum deposit rate regime a year earlier.
The Central Bank set a minimum rate of interest payable on savings deposits for decades, standing at 2.5 per cent from 2009.
The Official Gazette published a notice on April 7, 2015 announcing that, effective April 21 that year, the Central Bank would no longer stipulate that minimum, with each institution free to set its own rate on one month’s notice to customers. Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago had adopted a similar deregulation policy previously.
The financial data showed a major change in interest paid on savings deposits after the minimum savings rate ended.
Interest paid was $99.2 million in 2014, the last full year of the minimum savings rate, $17.8 million in 2016, the first full year without it, and $2.9 million in 2025, a fall of 97 per cent. The aggregate financial information also shows that deposit service charges rose over the same period during a period when transferable deposits grew from $7.41 billion in 2014 to $12.52 billion in 2025.
Other information from the aggregate income statement and balance sheet returns of the commercial banking sector included that dealing profits, which are almost entirely foreign exchange, were $86.3 million.
In addition, operating expenses were 69.2 per cent of operating income, pre-tax return on assets was 1.36 per cent, against 1.88 per cent in 2023, while total assets stood at $15.93 billion when 2025 concluded. (SC)
The post Fees fuel bank profits appeared first on nationnews.com.
