ATHENS – National Bank on Wednesday said its after tax profits from continued operations reached 833 million euros in 2021, while COP increased 40% to 450 million euros, underpinned by core income growth, continued cost cutting and normalizing CoR, providing strong evidence that NBG’s transformation is bearing fruit.

“Results from NBG’s multi-year transformation effort are more evident than ever in 2021. Capitalizing on Greece’s strong economic recovery, we have delivered strong organic profitability, an ambitious NPE clean-up and a growing and well-capitalized balance sheet, underpinned by the rapid change towards a more flexible and efficient operating model. Starting with asset quality, the stock of domestic NPEs declined to 2.1 billion euros and the net NPE exposure to only 0.5 billion euros. The NPE ratio in Greece dropped to 6.9%, down by 7 percentage points in a year, bringing us to just short of the 6% target, one year ahead of schedule. At the same time, despite a steady normalization of our CoR throughout 2021 to 68bps in 4Q21, our domestic cash coverage increased to 78% arising from the favorable underlying organic NPE formation trends comprising sustained organic curing and few new defaults. The completion of Ethniki Insurance sale and the strategic partnership with Evo Payments, with the former expected to close within the next few weeks and the latter in 4Q22, will add to our total capital ratio c160bps, creating strategically significant capital buffers. Looking ahead into 2022 and beyond, the prospects of the Greek economy are very positive, despite the inflationrelated headwinds that have been bolstered significantly further by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The fundamentals of the economy are strong and even with the current global environment, Greece should experience respectable positive output growth in 2022 and much better outcomes in 2023 and 2024. Thus, NBG’s performance targets remain ambitious. The results so far, and especially in 2021, affirm our capacity and dedication to deliver these goals,” Palvos Mylonas, Chief Executive Office said in a statement.