Stronger cash earnings from private and business banking, and discontinued operations that had come with costs, helped the lender swing back into profit.

Net profitable attributable to the owners of National Australia Bank swung into profit at A$2.55 billion ($1.89 billion) for the half-year to March, against a loss on the same basis of A$1.74 billion, the lender said yesterday. The big recovery in the resultis mainly caused by lower losses linked to discontinued operations.

(Included in the discontinued operations are provisions to conduct costs linked to various claims, and loss on the completion of a sale of certain UK property loans.)

Business and private banking logged a rise in cash earnings of 2.5 per cent to A$1.368 billion, it said.

Higher staffing costs drove expenses up by 0.8 per cent from the same period a year ago, the bank said.

The group's Common Equity Tier 1 ratio - a common measure of a bank's capital buffer under international Basel standards - was 10.1 per cent at the end of March this year, up by 34 basis points from September 2016, it said.