Christine Flynn, chair, Queensland Country Bank
The sale of its health fund to HBF has delivered to Queensland Country Bank one of the largest ever profits for a mutual bank, over the year to June 2023.
“This year was an extraordinary year for the bank with the sale of its subsidiary, Queensland Country Health Fund” the board told members in the annual report.
The bank made a gain on sale of A$159 million from the sale of the health fund.
“Excluding the proceeds from this sale, the bank’s [underlying] profit before income tax increased from $14.9 million to $41.7 million, which included a dividend from the Health Fund of $28.5 million,” the board said.
The bank’s pre-tax profit was $200.6 million and its net profit $149.8 million.
As a result, capital adequacy for the bank increased significantly from 15.30 per cent to 24.5 per cent. Approximately 7.4 percentage points of this increase was due to the sale of the health fund.
Operating expenses increased 12 per cent to $90.4 million.
Benefitting from the rates cycle, the net interest margin lifted to 2.03 per cent from 1.80 per cent in FY2022.