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All eyes on dividends: What to expect from Barclays and Natwest this week
Barclays Covid bad loan provisions were offset by strong performance in its investment bank (AFP via Getty Images)
Barclays and Natwest will be the first of the major high street banks to report full year results this week.
It has been a difficult 12 months with Brexit weighing on sentiment in addition to the fallout from the pandemic.
All eyes will be on dividend payments after the Prudential Regulation Authority effectively banned payouts last year. The Big Five banks – which also include HSBC, Standard Chartered and Lloyds – are expected to pay out £5bn in dividends for 2020 and £8.1bn in 2020.
Barclays – Full year results (Thursday)
The past 12 months have been difficult ones for banks in general, but UK banks have underperformed relative to their peers, Hewson said, with the unknowns of what a final Brexit deal might look like also weighing on investor sentiment, along with the fallout from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
As a result of these concerns their overall performance since the beginning of 2020 has been “disappointing,” as Hewson put it, with Barclays the best performer amongst the big four, currently down over 15 per cent from where it finished 2019.
“The recovery off the March lows of last year has been a long slow one, with management forced to cut shareholder pay-outs, as well as setting aside billions of pounds in provisions for non-performing loans,” he noted.