Barclays reported a more-than-halved pretax profit for the first half of 2020 after booking large credit impairment charges for the period, while it warned of a challenging second half.

The British bank posted a pretax profit for the first six months of the year of £1.27bn ($1.64bn) compared with £3.01bn for the same period a year earlier. Pretax profit for the second quarter was £359m, down from £1.53bn for the same quarter of 2019. This compares with estimates of £491m, according to the bank’s own compilation of consensus.