Credit Agricole posts 35% profit decline in 2020

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redit Agricole Group, a parent to a French bank and provider of leasing and factoring, recorded a net profit of €4.69bn in 2020, down 34.9% against 2019, but these figures hid a strong performance by its leasing and factoring unit during a difficult 2020. 

Crédit Agricole Group reported a year-on-year improvement in revenue of 0.9% in 2020 to €33.6bn.

It also operates two specialised financial services - Credit Agricole Consumer Finance and Credit Agricole Leasing & Factoring, "which have proven resilient, the decrease in revenues remains limited -1.1% despite a strong sensitivity of this activity to the economic environment," the company said. 

Specialised financial services activity "rebounded in December after a limited second lockdown impact ... The reason for this was the strong performance of the automobile joint ventures (+11% in Q4 2020 compared to Q4 2019)," the Group said in a statement. 

Leasing production at Credit Agricole Leasing & Factoring (CAL&F) was €1.8bn in Q4 2020, higher than Q4 2019 (+0.8%). This upturn, compared to Q3 2020 (+28.7%), was driven by performances in France and Poland. 

For full-year 2020, CAL&F revenues decreased by -6.7% compared to 2019 impacted by a lower factoring performance, strongly linked to the crisis and clients lower liquidity requirements. This saw an increase in cost/income ratio excluding SRF, which rose by 4.6 percentage points to 54.6%. 

As the cost of risk doubled compared to 2019, CAL&F’s net income Group share stood at €101m, down -40.8% compared to 2019.

In 2020, CAL&F's leasing was 98% of its 2019 level.