THE former RBC Royal Bank Jamaica Limited recorded more than $550 million in losses in 2014 due to rebranding and restructuring costs, according to its new parent Sagicor Group Jamaica (SGJ).

Despite that loss, SGJ made $8.5 billion in net profit for its December year end 2014 or 22 per cent higher year-on-year. It’s the 15th-straight year of improved profits.

“The RBC Jamaica acquisition transaction was completed effective June 27th 2014. Post-acquisition losses of $558 million were recorded, including rebranding and restructuring costs,” stated explanatory notes that accompanied the financials about RBC Royal Bank which was rebranded and integrated into Sagicor Bank Jamaica.

“On fair valuing, the acquired balance sheet a provisional negative goodwill emerged and was taken to Income in these accounts.”

Sagicor announced in January 2014 that it would acquire RBC Royal Bank for $9 billion, which closely reflected the book value of the Jamaica operations. Royal Bank of Canada stated that it would take a CAD$60- million loss on the sale of its Jamaican operations to SGJ. But it later upgraded that loss to CAD$100 million in total.

The local RBC operations recorded more than $9 billion in losses over the past four-and-a-half years mainly due to bad debts.

“During the year we completed the corporate reorganisation and the acquisition of RBC Jamaica. We also embarked on an ambitious programme to reorganise the commercial and investment banking operations, upgrade technology, and entrench a customer-centric and sales-oriented culture. We will be focusing on benefits realisation from these strategies in 2015,” according to a joint statement prefacing the SGJ financials signed by Chairman R Danny Williams and president Richard Byles.

SGJ’s two insurance divisions made more profit year-on-year with the individual lines earning $2.4-billion profit and employee benefits earning $3.9-billion profit. But both banking divisions dipped in profit with the investment banking division earning $385 million profit and the commercial banking division (of which the former RBC is now a part) recording a $498-million loss.

Total assets of the group grew to $284 billion or 43 per cent higher year-on-year with most of that growth attributable to the RBC acquisition, Byles and Williams explained.

The stockholders equity of SGJ stood at $46 billion, up 28 per cent from $35.93 billion as at December 2013.

“The growth in equity was driven mainly by earnings, unrealised fair value gains on US corporate bonds, re-measurement of Retirement Benefits and the purchase of Sagicor Investment Jamaica Ltd minority shares,” the executives stated.

Last June, Byles told shareholders that the full integration of RBC Bank Jamaica and SBJ would take about two years. He added that the acquisition would capture the “imagination” of executives over the period.