Home truths from emerging markets

At the same time, after repeated deep dives into the annual reports of EM banks, we noticed a widespread fondness for certain phrases that could perhaps most charitably be described as euphemistic. As a public service to our readers, we thought it might be handy to provide translations for a few of these…

God knows the branches of the past didn’t do us much good

F***, no one told us about 4G

“We’re taking a holistic approach to our customers”

If they won’t buy a mortgage, perhaps we can flog them life insurance

“The operating environment is challenging, but with the right approach you can make money”

We make sure the cash is laundered before it comes to us

Turns out giving local management a completely free hand wasn’t such a great idea

“We’ve done the work and taken the hit, we’re confident we are now fully provisioned”

We’re not booking the next loss until our bonuses come through

“In local currency terms, it was a very profitable year”

We had to take a 50% write-down because the local currency lost 50% of its value last year

We didn’t give a crap about this stuff when the money was coming in, but now we do