Butterfield Bank has gone through a testing recovery period — but now it is ready to focus on growing again.

That was the message from Michael Collins, the bank’s chief executive officer, who said the structural upheavals and cost-cutting necessary to get the bank back on an even keel since the global financial crisis brought it to its knees were now behind it.

Mr Collins joined chief financial officer Michael Schrum to discuss Butterfield’s prospects in an interview after the group announced full-year net income of $77.7 million this week.

“We’ve had five years of recovery and the work we have put into our cost structure, investment portfolio and our risk profile are largely complete,” Mr Collins said.

“Now we have a growth focus. We’ve made three acquisitions in the last two years and we are one of the last offshore, independent private wealth managers around.

“Our primary focus right now is the integration of the HSBC private banking trust and wealth management business in Bermuda, working toward a seamless transition and making sure the employees feel part of the Butterfield Group.”

That HSBC acquisition deal is set to close in the second quarter of this year. It follows the beefing up of Butterfield’s Cayman presence through the purchase of part of HSBC’s retail and corporate banking in the Caribbean territory last year. The acquisition of the Legis trust and corporate services business in Guernsey took place in 2014.

Meanwhile, the group is in the process of winding down its money-losing private bank in London.

The strategy behind these actions involves Butterfield building its offshore wealth management operations on the foundations of retail banking in Bermuda and Cayman.

Butterfield ended 2015 with a healthy-looking balance sheet, featuring $10.3 billion of total assets, $9.2 billion in customer deposits, $4 billion in loans, and shareholders’ equity of $750 million. Its total capital ratio was 19 per cent, comfortably exceeding regulators’ requirements.

Things were not looking so healthy in 2009. After writing off hundreds of millions of dollars of soured investments linked to US residential mortgages in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, Butterfield stabilised with the help of a $200 million government-guaranteed preference share issuance and then in 2010, a $550 million cash injection from investors led by the Carlyle Group and the Canadian International Bank of Commerce.

Last year CIBC cashed out, with Butterfield paying $120 million to buy back 80 million shares for cancellation, while the remaining 23.4 million shares of the Canadian bank’s stake were snapped up by the Carlyle Group.

When Carlyle first invested about $150 million in Butterfield in 2010, it expected the investment to have a five- to seven-year window. However, Mr Collins stressed that at Butterfield’s last annual shareholders’ meeting, Carlyle Group’s Olivier Sarkozy said the private-equity firm was committed to remaining invested in the bank while returns were increasing.

Mr Collins pointed out that Carlyle’s investment in the bank was now held in a fund featuring a ten-year investments.

But Butterfield, by far the biggest company listed on the is exploring a way that would ease the entry and exit of shareholders in the form of a listing on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in New York.

“It’s one way to get greater liquidity for our shareholders,” Mr Collins said.

The group would need to be fully prepared for an initial public offering of shares to the public, while the state of financial markets would also be a consideration in the timing, he added.

The bank is well placed to gauge the progress of the economy and the Butterfield CEO, who succeeded Brendan McDonagh in the role last year, sees reasons to be cheerful.

“We do see growth accelerating this year, although it will be slow and steady growth,” Mr Collins said. “All the information we get — and we see a lot of data points — suggests growth.

“We see an uptick in transaction volumes and we saw a 6 per cent increase in deposits last year. It’s patchy with some parts of the economy improving faster than others. Much of it is psychological and when people start to feel better about it, then it feeds on itself.”

Butterfield’s $4 billion loan book showed no growth last year, but Mr Collins said there was demand for new loans. The impact of amortisation — loan repayments — meant that Butterfield had to generate about $200 million of new gross loans just to remain flat, Mr Collins said.

“We are certainly ready to lend. We have not changed our lending requirements and we’re keen to support people who want a piece of The Rock,” he added. “But we are seeing more people paying with cash and being more conservative when they take out loans.”

Mr Schrum noted a positive trend in sales of properties linked to delinquent loans. “Last year we saw properties selling for more than their last appraisal and in recent years they have been selling for lower than their last appraisal,” the CFO said. “This could be an inflection point.”

With regard to the Government’s Budget, Mr Schrum said he welcomed the exemption for the banking sector from the planned new general services tax, as it was deemed an essential service. “However, when payroll tax goes up, it’s a real expense for us as a large employer,” he added.