Nedbank lifts profit on fee income

Johannesburg - Nedbank [JSE:NED] reported a 14.1% increase in first-half profit on Tuesday as growth in fee income helped offset muted growth in lending.

Nedbank, majority-owned by Anglo-South African insurer Old Mutual [JSE:OML], said headline earnings per share rose to 1 101 cents in the six months to the end of June from 965c a year earlier.

Non-interest revenue, or income from transaction and deposit fees, rose 10.2% to R10.4bn.

Net-interest income, a closely watched measure of how much money banks make from their loans, grew marginally, helped by corporate credit demand.

Lending to companies is increasingly becoming the mainstay for the country's banks as they pull back from high margin but risky unsecured credit, which relies solely on a customer's promise to pay it back, due to dangerously high personal debt levels.

But an electricity crisis at home and the impact of weaker commodity prices in nearby countries could temper corporate credit growth.