The French bank reported a rise in net revenue for the final quarter and the full-year 2019 of 7.7% and 3.3% respectively, ending the year at €20.4 billion ($22.1 billion). It attributed the rise to strong commercial activity in all of its business lines, including ‘record net inflows’ in its asset management business, Amundi.

Assets under management (AUMs) in its asset gathering and insurance business reached €2.15 trillion at the end of 2019, up 14% compared to 2018, despite continuing uncertainty in the global environment.  For Amundi, AUMs were 16% higher than in 2018, at €1.653 trillion on the back of strategic partnerships in China, with Bank of China, and in Spain with Banco Sabadell and Sabadell AM.

For its corporate and investment banking business (CACIB), underlying sales were 6.5% higher in 2019 (€4.7 billion), as capital markets (FICC) and investment & equity (+54.7% Q4/Q4) saw ‘very solid credit, fixed income and foreign exchange performances [and] resilient M&A activities despite an unfavourable market context’.

It also said net income reached a historic level in 2019 (€4.6 billion), up four percent in the prior year, while the metric for Q4 was up 23.5%. Net income for its wealth management segment rose by nearly 13% year-on-year driven by an increase in revenues (performance fees) and a fall in expenses, while the figure for its asset management line saw a huge quarterly rise of 26.8%. Its insurance segment saw more modest growth.

The bank also reported it was accelerating its green strategy including CACIB participating in the structuring in 2019 of more than €42.9bn worth of green bonds.

It also noted revenue synergies at €9 billion at group level, up €0.3 billion year-on-year, primarily driven by its insurance business.

In its home market of France, Crédit Agricole collected approximately €380m from 51 structured products in 2019, a rise in sales volume compared to the €350m accumulated from 35 products in the prior year period, according to SRP data.

The final quarter saw the highest in the final quarter came from products issued in its Japan, where it collected nearly US$296m from 17 products in the period. These were primarily products linked to single shares including Nintendo and Subaru, and index baskets such as the Nikkei 225 and S&P 500. The structures were distributed via over 10 different providers, including Daiwa Securities Monex Securities, IwaiCosmo Securities, Chugin Securities and Kagawa Securities. This final distributor hosted the bank’s performing product during the quarter under review, 複数指数連動/Nikkei, S&P500 M20240227, a registered note linked to the performance of Nikkei 225 and S&P 500. It returned 10.08% pa.

Outside of Japan, the bank issued products in Taiwan (13), France (10) and the Nordics (3).

Chief executive officer Philippe Brassac said: “All business lines contributed to this annual growth, thanks to dynamic commercial activity, which resulted in a net gain of 370,000 individual customers and entrepreneurs in France and Italy this year…The growth of our profitability is robust. It is driven as much by the dynamism of revenues as by the improvement in operational efficiency, without impeding investment in the development of our business lines. And it is done by controlling risk-weighted assets and keeping the cost of risk low.”

Click the link to view the Crédit Agricole 4Q19 & full year 2019 results and the presentation.