Singapore’s banks frontload IFRS 9 provisioning hit

UOB, OCBC announce $1.4 billion set-asides in Q4 results to account for oil and gas loan exposures

Two of Singapore’s largest lenders have announced a steep rise in provisioning against oil and gas loans they believe are set to deteriorate in credit quality, in a move apparently designed to prevent a future spike in loan-loss set-asides under new accounting standards that kicked in on January 1.

In its results for the fourth quarter of 2017, announced today (February 14), OCBC disclosed a four-fold rise in loan-loss allowances versus the previous quarter to S$1.01 billion ($7.99 billion).