‘This is Star Trek Finance’: COVID-19 forces Canada’s banks into a strange new world

“We would describe the current environment … as going where no one has gone before,” said Louis Vachon, chief executive of Montreal-based National Bank of Canada, during a conference call Tuesday evening.

Vachon’s comments came after National Bank reported $379 million in net income for the three months ended April 30, a 32-per-cent decrease from the same quarter last year.

Bank of Nova Scotia chief executive Brian Porter on Tuesday said he anticipates higher-than-usual loan-loss provisions for the rest of the year.

“More recently, we’ve started to see a cautious reopening of certain economies, including those in Canada,” said Dave McKay, Royal Bank of Canada’s chief executive.

RBC and the Bank of Montreal, the largest and fourth-largest members of the Big Six, respectively, were the latest to report second-quarter results, and both banks on Wednesday revealed that profit in the three months ended April 30 was half of what it was in the same period a year earlier.

RBC’s net income was $1.48 billion, down 54 per cent from a year earlier.

Total provisions for credit losses at RBC were $2.83 billion for the second quarter, an increase of $2.4 billion from last year, while BMO set aside around $1.1 billion, compared with only $176 million a year earlier, when the bank said it realized a large recovery on a U.S.

RBC’s adjusted diluted earnings per share were $1.03, down by 54 per cent year over year, and below the $1.54 consensus of analysts.

“The economic recovery is likely to be uneven, with some sectors able to rebound quickly and even outperform as they take advantage of accelerating trends that were already emerging,” BMO chief executive Darryl White said during a conference call on Wednesday