Dutch bank ABN Amro has reported a bigger-than-expected 12% rise in quarterly profit today, helped by lower expenses as the lender continued to push towards trimming its workforce.
Net profit for the first quarter came in at €693m, above average expectations of €569m from analysts polled by the bank.
Net interest income, a measure of earnings on loans minus deposit costs, rose 5% to €1.64 billion, with fees rising further 20% to €608m.
Quarterly costs came well below expectations and stood at €1.28 billion, prompting the lender to lower its annual cost guidance to around €5.5 billion from €5.6 billion.
"The number of full-time (job) equivalents decreased by 528 in the first quarter", CEO Marguerite Bérard said in a statement, adding that the pace of reductions should slow down for the rest of the year.
ABN Amro said it was going ahead with its plan to axe 5,200 full-time jobs by 2028 to cut costs.
Its cost-to-income ratio came down to 55.9% at the end of the quarter, which is slightly above the industry average of 52.4%, as calculated by the European Banking Authority.
