Bank of Scotland (Ireland) has announced pre-tax profits of €272m for 2007, up 28% on the previous year.
The bank said that advances to customers increased by 26% to €29.8 billion and customer deposits rose by 22% to €9.7 billion in the year.
The bank said it saw strong growth across all its businesses, with local currency growth in business banking up 24% and retail up 31%.
BoS (Ireland) said its business banking performance was strong across all divisions in terms of both volumes and profit. Advances grew by 24% to €20.9 billion. New lending grew by 16%.
The bank said its retail businesses - retail branch network, intermediary homeloans and asset finance - performed well with lending up by 31% to €8.9 billion. The bank attracted a further 72,000 new customers in 2007.
'This result was driven by an excellent performance from our business banking operations and strong demand in retail banking, where we attracted over 72,000 new customers, which was considerably ahead of our expectations,' commented Mark Duffy, the CEO of Bank of Scotland (Ireland).
'Whilst we anticipate tougher operating conditions in 2008, we continue to enjoy strong demand for our products which underpins confidence that our business model is well placed to take advantage of these conditions,' he added.
Meanwhile, the bank's UK parent - Halifax Bank of Scotland - posted lower than expected annual profits today and warned of continued uncertainty in financial markets this year.
Underlying pre-tax profits came in 3% higher at £5.71 billion sterling for 2007 - but below City forecasts of £5.76 billion.
The bank captured 22% of new mortgages in the second half of last year but said it would put profitability ahead of market share in future.
'We are planning on the assumptions that market conditions will remain uncertain throughout 2008,'HBOS said.
Headline pre-tax profits fell 4% to £5.47 billion, reflecting factors such as costs related to possible refunds of overdraft fees to customers - currently the subject of a test case brought by the Office of Fair Trading.
Despite the lower than expected profits and the financial turmoil which shook markets in the latter half of last year, HBOS also looked to offer reassurance over its funding position.
The company said the supply of wholesale funding to the bank 'remained strong', while customer deposits increased 15% to £243.2 billion.
