Montepio bags €35.3 million in Q1

Portugal’s mutual bank Montepio, and the only one to remain solely in Portuguese hands, has made a healthy profit of €35.3 million for the first quarter of 2023 – one which exceeded the society’s total profit for 2022.

This was according to Virgílio Lima, the President of Montepio who addressed business leaders on Thursday at the Lisbon Marriott Hotel where he was guest speaker at a lunch organised by the International Club of Portugal (ICPT) and on ‘Mutualism and Social Cohesion’.
According to Newmen which was at the event – Essential Business was unable to attend because of coverage of the Portugal Property Exhibition – SIL 2023 – the banker said that the group’s entities, of which Montepio Bank is a strategic partner, carry extraordinary weight, particularly because the bank produce results and that a part of these results were returned to the mutual association and its members through dividends.
“This is vital for the association’s business activities because the capital that is in the bank comprises the savings of the members who need the returns from the dividends. Thankfully, at the moment all of the companies in the group are posting positive results and therefore we expect that these results will be consistent in the future and will give a greater return for our members by the same way,” he said.
Newmen also asked the banker why Portugal’s banking sector was closing down branches up and down the country.
“With digitalisation and online banking many customers are now using the bank’s services remotely and very often in some places branches are practically empty. This calls their very existence into question because customers are using new distribution channels and new forms of relating to the banks and during the pandemic period this was very developed -, therefore it is only natural that some branches which are underused should be closed down and it is because of digitisation and changes in customer habits that these restructurings are taking place”, said