Banco Nacional Ultramarino (BNU) in Macau announced today net profits of 225.3 million patacas (24.2 million euros) in the first half of the year, a year-on-year decline of 1.3%.
Even so, the results released today show an improvement compared to the first quarter, a period in which the financial institution’s profit had fallen 17% compared to January-March 2025.
The bank pointed to a 0.9% increase, to 434.2 million patacas (46.6 million euros), in net financial margin, the difference between revenue from loans and interest paid on deposits, as the main reason for the improvement in the second quarter.
“This performance reflected growth in business volume, despite the impact of the reduction in interest rates on asset profitability,” BNU noted in a statement.
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This comes after the Monetary Authority of Macau approved three reductions in the main reference interest rate in 2025, the last of which was a 0.25 percentage point cut, introduced on December 11, tracking the U.S. Federal Reserve. By contrast, revenue from services and commissions charged by the bank fell 2.3%, to 44.5 million patacas (4.77 million euros), and complementary financial margin was affected “by the reduction in results from financial operations.”
BNU also indicated it recorded losses of 14.7 million patacas (1.58 million euros) from bad debt and financial investments, down 62% compared to the same period in 2025. This reduction “reflects the continued resilience of asset quality, (…) in line with the bank’s prudent approach to risk management,” the institution stressed.
BNU recorded a 26.3% drop in net profits in 2025, the second consecutive year in which the financial institution’s earnings shrank, following a 0.4% decrease in profits in 2024. BNU is headquartered in Macau and belongs to the Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) Group, and, together with the Bank of China, is a currency-issuing bank in China’s special administrative region.
According to official data, Macau’s banks recorded profits of 7.34 billion patacas (769 million euros) in 2025, almost double what was recorded the previous year (up 92.7%). Bad debt fell 11.6% over the course of last year to 49.7 billion patacas (5.2 billion euros). It was the first annual decline in overdue loans since 2013.
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Overdue loans accounted for 4.9% of Macau banks’ loans, down 0.6 percentage points from the end of 2024. That percentage rises to 5.6% in the case of credit to institutions or individuals outside the Chinese region. Even so, the percentage of overdue bank credit in Macau remains far from the record 25.3% reached in mid-2001, at the height of the global economic crisis caused by the bursting of the dot-com speculative bubble.
