Awards for Excellence country winners: Bahamas

Tourism is central to the economy of the Bahamas and the country continued to recover from the pandemic-enforced lockdowns with strong GDP growth of more than 4% in 2023. Scotiabank’s business in the country similarly continues to improve from the Covid years and, in 2023, the bank achieved its highest profitability for 15 years with net income of $70.3 million, up by almost 46% year on year. The bank’s management attributes this to a range of initiatives executed in previous years, such as the branch network optimization strategy and revenue enhancement strategies to progressively lower operating costs and boost revenues.

The management team’s strategic focus has been to grow underlying non-interest revenues, boost efficiency by reducing structural costs, and to tighten credit scoring to improve asset quality. The strategy has clearly worked – the cost-to-income ratio fell to 52.5%