MILAN (Reuters – Italy’s most important bank Intesa Sanpaolo has boosted its full year profit outlook on Wednesday after beating market expectations and lower loan losses in the third quarter.

Intesa’s results confirmed the positive picture painted for the sector by competitors such as France’s BNP Paribas, Spain’s or Britain’s Lloyds (LON) – whose results were also supported by shrinking provisions and the release cash reserved against COVID-driven loans losses.

Intesa’s net profit was 983 million euro ($1.1 billion) during the July-September period. This is well over the analyst consensus of 850million euros compiled in Reuters.

Intesa now anticipates that it will make a profit of more than 4 billion euros in 2021. This was Intesa’s prior full-year goal, which it achieved in nine months.

Due to strong trading, revenues totalled 5.09 Billion Euros, more than expected at 4.93 Billion.

While income from the lending business saw little change quarter-on–quarter, it was 6.1% lower than a year earlier due to negative rates. This is compounded with intense competition in Italy and slower credit growth.

Net fees increased 8.3% in year-on-year due to robust asset management and commercial banking activities during post-lockdown, but fell 1.9% from quarter 2.

The bank set aside almost 1 billion euros in order to cover future losses on the loan book. This was a 44% increase from July through September 2020.

The results resulted in shares being little different from the flat Italy banking index. They were 0.3% lower at 1255 GMT.

($1 = 0.8632 euros)